Description

This image is a polyp's skeleton called a corallite. A polyp is the tiny animal that, with thousands of its “siblings,” creates the structure known as a coral. Without this information, however, the image might be an alien landscape, futuristic city, or abstract painting.

Taken at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum under Dr. Geiger, this scanning electron micrograph used a negative detector, which reversed the skeleton’s blacks and whites to create this ominous yet striking image.