Microscopy, mineralogy, photography and spectroscopy should be the keywords of this site. You'll find therein  my own collection (not yet complete, new pictures coming soon) of thin section slides manufactured from rocks collected in the field during walks. My purpose was not to make a systematic presentation of rocks under the microscope but simply to show some interesting images of  minerals and rocks.

         The majority of the  thin sections and polished slabs included here have been manufactured manually with glass plates and abrasive powders according to the suggestions of Mac Kenzie and Guilford in their atlas of petrography.  I'm also adding images of sections I have bought.

          In addition of thin sections of rocks and meteorites,  I have also included some  convergent light pictures, an illustration of the measurement of the indices of refraction of small crystals with different techniques (in particular the phase contrast microscopy), a collection of stereoscopic photographs of minerals (anaglyphs) which can be viewed  with color filter glasses and recently the design of two microscope spectrometers which can be used to study the transmission spectra of small crystals of the thin sections in the visible and NIR wavelength ranges..

 See New spectrometer with a broader wavelength range (visible + NIR) and additional mineral spectra.

J.M.DEROCHETTE

  E-Mail: j.m.derochette@skynet.be 

Last update : April 20th  2008.