The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty

National Geographic Snowflakes Pictures: Photograph 1 (winter, Christmas)
National Geographic Snowflakes Pictures: Photograph 2 (winter, Christmas)
National Geographic Snowflakes Pictures: Photograph 3 (winter, Christmas)
National Geographic Snowflakes Pictures: Photograph 4 (winter, Christmas)
National Geographic Snowflakes Pictures: Photograph 5 (winter, Christmas)
National Geographic Snowflakes Pictures: Photograph 6 (winter, Christmas)
National Geographic Snowflakes Pictures: Photograph 7 (winter, Christmas)
National Geographic Snowflakes Pictures: Photograph 8 (winter, Christmas)
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National Geographic Snowflakes Pictures: Photograph 1 (winter, Christmas)
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Physicist Kenneth Libbrecht calls these new photographs by Patricia Rasmussen "better than any snowflake images that have ever been captured before."

Wilson Bentley made the first photograph of a single snow crystal (what most people think of as a snowflake) in 1885. The self-educated Vermont farmer used a bellows camera attached to a microscope.

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—Photograph by and copyright Patricia Rasmussen, courtesy Voyageur Press
 

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