Nanoscapes (on Butterfly Wings)

Butterfly wings display an amazing range of colors, but it's not always from pigments. Rather, these colors, from bright to dark to strangely iridescent, are often caused by the way light bounces off tiny physical structures on the wing's surface. The way a butterfly's colors can change, or iridesce, is due to the angle of that light. The colors are seen differently by other species. What may look invisible to a predator may also be a bright, attractive color to other butterflies, and different still to the human eye. Whatever works to help the butterfly survive long enough to reproduce.

The award-winning film Nanoscapes shows us the structures that produce these colors, from a normal view down to the electron microscope level that magnifies the details up to 50,000 times. At the microscopic level, the surface of a butterfly's wings take on the look of a fantasy alien landscape. -via Nag on the Lake