If you told me this was a computer generated image of a mothership hovering over a planet’s surface, I would have believed you. Instead, I had to look up desmids, which turned out to be a form of green algae. I would have guessed this is a cell in the process of dividing, but it turns out that one of the characteristic features of desmids is that they’re a single cell divided into two compartments. (See, even I’m learning something from this.) Desmids are so tiny that this image was taken at 100x power. The green backdrop? It’s a moss.

arstechnica.com/science/2012/10/a-small-but-glorious-world-the-best-microscope-images-of-2012/