Zeiss -- Fluorescence is working now

Our rep, Sam Byerly, was able to bring by a loaner X-Cite illumination system, and it works great. There is no alignment to do, and the field is evenly illuminated due to the "liquid light" system, I believe. The bulbs last 2000 hours, instead of just 300, so that's an improvement too. The only downside is that instead of using the Atto Arc and dialing down by 1% increments to adjust intensity, there is a slider on the X-Cite unit that allows 0%, 12%, 25%, 50% or 100% of the light through. We have ordered an additional attenuator that should effectively allow us a similar level of control but with a less simple interface (coordinating the attenuation using both controls in tandem). Anyway, I took my first virtual slice today, using red fluorescence at 10X, spanning about 10 fields of view, and WOW! It looks great, and without me having to tweak the alignment. We can now do fluorescent montages without having to crop as many pixels and without having to account for the uneven illumination. Our X-Cite unit will be identical to the one we're borrowing, and should arrive next week.