Snow Crystals on December 15th, 2009
A snowflake photographed through a microscope. The underlying structure of water ice and thus all snow crystals is hexagonal. Many crystals show dendritic growth and complicated inclusions like in "decorated" plate and column crystals that make halos. Leica D-Lux 4, eyepiece projection through a microscope with LED light. The "cold" light allows short exposure times without destroying the flake.
See http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/ for details of snowflakes and their formation.
Links to related articles: