Photo of Single Atom

I thought atoms were too small for the naked eye to see...

Atoms absorb and emit photons when the electrons change energy levels. So a single atom can absorb light from a laser and emit light that can be seen even though the atom itself is too small to image, and if the atom is fairly stationary, the photons emitted can be photographed. (It's not much different from seeing the light from a distant star when the angular size of the star is far too small to resolve.)

I would think the trick would be trapping just one atom and keeping it in place.

Yeah, the fluff piece doesn't tell us how one atom was isolated.

I'm sorry, but I don't consider a single dot to be a photograph! It may be a photograph where the presence of a single atom is visible, if you know what to look for and where to look, but it does not show anything about the size, shape, or structure of the atom.

Perhaps I'm nitpicking, but I consider the title misleading. I think "Photo shows single atom" would be more appropriate.

....or, atom location illuminated....

The photo is visible to the naked eye, but the atom is not. The whole photo process makes the eye far from naked.

I want pics of a married atom with it's wife & kids....
Del

Taken using an atom selfie stick of course.

Best I can do...

But you'd better have the right amount of kids!

Here is a whole boat load, well, a needle point of iridium atoms in a matrix - picture taken at PSU.

That's a lot closer to what I expected. Of course Iridium atoms have a whole lot more sub-atomic particles than Strontium, but I don't really know how directly the number of sub-atomic particles relates to atomic physical size/spacing or its ability to reflect or absorb and re-emit light.

What amazes me is there is often a post about "seeing an atom" like it is something new. This process was first done in 1955, and the crude picture included was by me, a lowly undergrad who never made it to the post graduate program in physics, in 1976.

The real concept in this post is the process. That is very ingenious to "hold" that atom in place like that, and then use light to accentuate it. Very well done.

You took that picture of iridium? As an undergrad? How did you do it? I'm impressed -- but Penn State does attract an intelligent and talented student body (frat boys perhaps excluded ...)

Nothing to be impressed by, really. Just routine lab work for a student in the physics curriculum.

That picture is Dr. Mueller's Field Ion Microscope technology being applied in a special lab. (Google this and you get a better explanation than I can present in limited space) PSU has (had?) a special dark room set up for this sort of work. Windowless and painted flat black, of course, and you enter through a multiple turn maze. It is a part of lab work for anyone in their physics curriculum, as the first application of this technology occurred right where this picture was taken. The fun part is developing the film in as total a darkness as possible.

What is impressive is that someone of Dr. Erwin Muller's abilities chose what was then just a "farm school", in 1955, situated in the middle of Pennsylvania farm country, to do this experiment. I just happened to live near there and go to that school.

An amazing journey:

Awesome!

(...but, is it ready now for it's ''closeup'', Mr. (Cecile B.) Demille?...)