Caption: Particles In Flight uses organic aerosols collected on six flights as part of the Dynamic Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere campaign in 2022 to outline the NASA ER-2 aircraft use for their collection. Particles were imaged with Scanning Transmission X-Ray Microscopy coupled with Near Edge X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure (STXM/NEXAFS). The colors represent different chemical components: red for black carbon, green for organic carbon, and blue for inorganic components. These particles are launched into the stratosphere during severe wildfire events. My goal is to highlight the beauty I see in particle analysis and the atmosphere.

Caption: This SEM image showcases a micron-sized particle collected in Waller, Texas, during the Tracking Aerosol Convection Interactions Experiment (TRACER) campaign. The particle's composition includes inorganic compounds, organics, and metals, reflecting the complex nature of atmospheric aerosols. These micron-scale particles are critical in aerosol-cloud interactions, significantly impacting climate systems. By revealing the intricate structure of such particles, this image provides a unique visual insight into the micro-worlds that shape our atmosphere, offering a deeper understanding of the unseen forces influencing our environment.

Caption: This SEM image showcases a micron-sized particle collected in Waller, Texas, during the Tracking Aerosol Convection Interactions Experiment (TRACER) campaign. The particle's composition includes inorganic compounds, organics, and metals, reflecting the complex nature of atmospheric aerosols. These micron-scale particles are critical in aerosol-cloud interactions, significantly impacting climate systems. By revealing the intricate structure of such particles, this image provides a unique visual insight into the micro-worlds that shape our atmosphere, offering a deeper understanding of the unseen forces influencing our environment.

Caption: Guess the animal! The following images were taken with the Titan 80-300 TEM located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Image acquisition was done with a prototype Gatan UltraScan1000 2k x 2k camera. The aerosols imaged were collected during the NYC-METS campaign in New York City. We believe they closely resemble particular animals, and want to see if others can guess what animals we see. Make your guesses, then flip the tab to see if you guessed correctly!

Caption: Bioaerosols, include airborne particles of biological origin such as bacteria, viruses, fungal spores, and pollen which have significant environmental and health implications. For human health, exposure to bioaerosols can lead to allergic reactions, respiratory illnesses, and even the spread of infectious diseases like influenza or COVID-19. They infect humans, plants and animals in a variety of ways – through food, air, water and soil, and are estimated to be responsible for more than 15 million deaths worldwide each year. The identification and characterization of bioaerosols are essential for understanding their impact on human health, environmental quality, and broader ecological systems. Characterizing these particles helps in identifying the sources and concentrations of potential allergens, pathogens, and toxins that may pose risks to populations, particularly in high-exposure environments like healthcare settings, agricultural sites, and indoor spaces with poor ventilation. The biological or biochemical processes in health and diseases focusing new targets for molecular diagnosis and therapeutics are very crucial to develop not only advance detection methodology but also need to update treatment regimen procedure. The development of fast and accurate detection and identification systems for biological components in environment has long been an important issue and is also need of the hour. This drives the scientific community to develop sensors to sense the changes in biological environment, able to monitor precisely and provide alerts of possible harm in real time against these pathogens.

Caption: In virus-laden respiratory particles, the position of virus relative to proteins and other components of the particles is important for understanding inactivation mechanisms of virus during airborne transmission. Thus, we visualized Influenza A virus labeled with red fluorescent dye in dried model respiratory droplets at 50% relative humidity, which contained 0.1% mucin, the most abundant proteins in our respiratory fluids. Most of the virus clustered around the coffee ring and dendritic patterns close to the ring, where mucin was also highly concentrated. This co-localization of Influenza A virus and mucin in droplets may help enhance the survivability of virus.

Caption: This 'agglomerate lobster' was formed on the stabilization plate located 60 mm above the Flat Premixed Droplet-Seeded Flame (FPDSF) facility in the Flame, Aerosol, and Nano Technologies (FANTastic) Lab at the University of Connecticut. It was 'caught' upon scraping the stabilization plate and observing the resulting material under an optical microscope. The agglomerate is about 8 microns long and 4 microns wide at its 'claws'.

Caption: This tiny football is actually a PVC microplastic that has been imaged with SEM. Microplastics like this one find their way into the atmosphere where their impacts are still uncertain. This microplastic was being analyzed to determine the surface morphology as a part of a larger study on the role microplastics may play as ice nucleating particles in the atmosphere. The surface area of microplastics is difficult to determine reliably through gas adsorption and so stereoscopic SEM was attempted to get a better estimate of the surface area of these particles. The size of the microplastics makes them difficult to entirely coat during sputter coating. This leads to charging of the sample by the electron beam and produces the streaks in the image. These streaks really make it look like this football is flying through the air.

Caption: This is a TEM image of polyethylene glycol and ammonium sulfate solution at 72% relative humidity, captured using the flash freeze technique. This metho is useful for studying the morphonology of submicron particles at different humidity levels, as it allows the particles to equilibrate at the desired relative humidity and then be vitrified for cryo-TEM analysis. In this study, we are investigating the size-dependent morphology of the polyethylene glycol and ammonium sulfate system, which is relevant to understanding the composition and behavior of atmospheric aerosols.