SEM imaging practice and fun!

I found a lot of cool samples in the SEM lab room.  This is a wasp abdomen and the widest angle possible.  

The abdomen was coated in gold to improve the imaging.  Certain material absorbs or radiates the electrons poorly, so they are coated with a gold mist.  I really don't understand how you can coat something so delicately!

I was using these cool specimens to practice the different imaging algorithms and methods.  For example to get this picture I adjusted the power of the electrons being projected and rotated and tilted the sample to get this interesting angle.

In the background of this picture you can see a bug leg.  Again this is as wide as the SEM can go.

The leg had so much detail it was awesome!

Even the hairs on the leg have ridges in them.  There is so much detail in nature.  Even though this picture looks very clear, it should be clearer and I should be able to zoom in much farther.  I talked with Dr. Smith and she says that their is an astigmatism with the focus of the electrons.  I hope I can work with her to fix the focus so we can zoom in even farther.  

Looking at the tips on the leg hairs I'm curious if we could find something naturally occurring in nature and simply coat it to use for our AFM.  That would be an incredibly cool different way to make tips.