First Image of a Single Molecule

WOW!! That's a 5 star post.

That's a helluva a microscope:

I wonder which hole you look in?

Forgive my wide, deep ignorance, but something about this puzzles me.

On another site I saw that same photograph alongside one of the standard textbook "molecular structure" visualization aids (you know, those drawings consisting of some hexagons joined by straight lines with balls at the unions) of the same molecule and they looked fairly much the same.

Being that in my circles chemistry is viewed as being only one small step removed from voodoo, I always assumed that such visualizations were just that - a convenient way to doodle in something that in reality would be a jumbled (but structured) mess. So is it just a remarkable conincidence the real thing turns out so similar or are those hexegon-y visualization aids actually based on physical properties of atoms / molecules?

I guess I'm just on the wrong mental track, thinking of the smudgy blur of quantum-loopyness that is an atom and so I'm assuming that molecules should just be clumps of whirly-swirls that follow strict rules, but not to the eye.

And by the way, I also should mention that the "clumps of whirly-swirls molecular model" is copyrighted. However I am waving that provided that I get half of any future Nobel Prize money that might result from its use.

Isn't the design of a molecule copyrighted?