Confocal Microscopes at BIC
The BIC facility has several confocal microscopes with various configurations.
Zeiss LSM980-Airy2
The LSM980-Airy2 confocal is built around an inverted microscope with a motorized x/y-stage and filter-less control of fluorescence emission. The system is equipped with an Airy detector2 for super resolution capacity. Furthermore, the LSM980 microscope has a temperature control module for live cell imaging.
Specifications:
- Laser lines (nm): 405, 445,488, 561, 594, 639
- Objectives: 5X, 10X and 20X air/dry, 40X water and 63X oil.
- Extra: Super resolution, Lambda imaging, Confocal reflection microscopy. Motorized x/y-stage allows tiling, live cell imaging
- Software: For PC: ZEN lite, for Mac (and alternative for PC): FiJi.
Zeiss LSM900-Airy2
The Zeiss LSM900-Airy2 confocal is built around an inverted microscope with a motorized x/y-stage and an Airy detector2 for super resolution capacity.
Specifications:
- Laser lines (nm): 405, 488, 561, 640.
- Objectives: 5X, 10X and 20X air/dry, 40X water, 63X oil.
- Extra: Super resolution, Motorized x/y-stage allows tiling, Stitching module for best adjustments of the tiles
- Software: For PC: Zen lite. For MAC (and alternative for PC): ImageJ/Fiji.
Zeiss LSM880
The LSM880 confocal is built around an inverted microscope with a motorized x/y-stage and filter-less control of fluorescence emission.
Specifications:
- Laser lines (nm): 405, 458, 488, 514, 561, 633.
- Objectives: 5X, 10X and 20X air/dry, 40X oil and 63X oil.
- Extra: Lambda imaging, Confocal reflection microscopy. Motorized x/y-stage allows tiling.
- Software: For PC: ZEN lite, for Mac (and alternative for PC): FiJi.
Zeiss LSM800-Airy
The Zeiss LSM800-Airy confocal is built around an inverted microscope with a motorized x/y-stage and and an Airy detector for super resolution capacity. Fixed filters and/or filterless emission window control.
Specifications:
- Laser lines (nm): 405, 488, 561, 640.
- Objectives: 5X, 10X and 20X air/dry, 63X water, 63X oil.
- Extra: Super resolution, Lambda imaging, DIC with 63X water objective, Motorized x/y-stage allows tiling, Stitching module for best adjustments of the tiles.
- Software: For PC: Zen lite. For MAC (and alternative for PC): ImageJ/Fiji.
Zeiss LSM800
The Zeiss LSM800 confocal is built around an inverted microscope with motorized x/y-stage, DIC capacity and stitching module. Fixed filters and/or filterless emission window control.
Specifications:
- Laser lines (nm): 405, 488, 561, 640.
- Objectives: 5X, 10X and 20X air/dry, 40X water, 100X oil.
- Extra: Lambda imaging, DIC with 20X, 40X and 100X objectives, Motorized x/y-stage allows tiling, Stitching module for best adjustments of the tiles.
- Software: For PC: Zen lite. For MAC (and alternative for PC): ImageJ/Fiji.
Zeiss LSM710
The LSM710 confocal is built around an inverted microscope with motorized x/y-stage and filter-less control of fluorescence emission. It also has a stage top incubator for live cell imaging.
Specifications:
- Laser lines (nm): 405, 458, 488, 514, 561, 633.
- Objectives: 10X and 20X air/dry, 25X imm (oil/glyc/water), 40X water, 63X oil.
- Extra: Lambda imaging. Confocal reflection microscopy, DIC with 20X, 25X, 40X W and 63X oil objectives, Motorized x/y-stage allows tiling, Stage top incubator for live cell imaging.
- Software: For PC: Zen lite. For MAC (and alternative for PC): ImageJ/Fiji.
Zeiss LSM700
The LSM700 confocal is built around an inverted microscope equipped with motorized x/y-stage and fixed emission filters. It has a variable secondary dichroic (VSD) to allow fine tuning of the emission windows.
Specifications:
- Laser lines (nm): 405, 488, 555, 639.
- Objectives: 5X, 10X, and 20X air/dry, 40X water, 63X oil.
- Extra: Lambda imaging, DIC with 10X, 20X, 40X water and 63X oil objectives, Motorized x/y-stage allows tiling.
- Software: For PC: Zen lite. For MAC (and alternative for PC): ImageJ/Fiji.
Olympus FV1000
The Olympus FV1000 confocal is built around an inverted microscope with a manual x/y-stage.
Specifications:
- Laser lines (nm): 405, 473, 559, 635.
- Objectives: 4X, 10X, 20X and 40X air/dry, 60X water and 60X oil.
- Extra: DIC, High Dynamic range imaging, Reduced user fee by 50%.
- Software: :For PC: Olympus FV10-ASW, for MAC (and alternative for PC): ImageJ/Fiji.
Leica Stellaris 5
The Leica Stellaris 5 is a line scanning confocal microscope equipped with a tuneable white light laser, resonance scanner and HyD S detectors. The new TauSense tools utilizes fluorescence lifetime information and can be used improve image quality, increase the number or probes that can be use in an imaging experiment and can help in the removal of autofluorescence.
Specifications:
- Illumination: 405nm and 448 diode lasers, white light laser tuneable between 485nm and 685nm
- Objectives: 10X/0.4 Dry/0.75 air, 20X/0.75 immersion (W, Sil, Gly, Oil) , 40X/1.25 Gly with a motorize correction collar, 63X/1.4 Oil.
- Detectors: 5 HyD S detectors. Detects up to 850nm.
- Motorized stage: accommodates all multi-well plates, slides, petri dishes of 100mm or smaller
- Software: LAS X for Stellaris
Special features:
- Lightning: software based adaptive multicolour super-resolution and deconvolution
- Tau-tools: A set of tools that utilise fluorescence life time information to for example remove autofluorescence
- Dynamic Signal Enhancement: used with resonance scanner can enhance signal while live cell imaging
- Photon counting mode: provides more accuracy for quantitative imaging.
Nikon / CrEST X-Light V3 Spinning Disk
The X-Light V3 is a spinning disk confocal which is built around a Nikon Ti2-E inverted microscope with a motorized x/y-stage and filter-based control of fluorescence emission. The system is equipped with a Photometrics Kinetix Back-Illuminated CMOS camera with 95%QE. Furthermore, the X-Light V3 microscope has a temperature control module for live cell imaging.
Specifications:
- Laser lines (confocal/widefield, nm): 405, 446, 477, 518, 545, 637, 748
- LED lines (Widefield, nm): 340, 380, 435, 470, 500, 550, 580, 635
- Objectives: 4X, 10X, 20X and 20X with correction ring air/dry, 25X silicone and 60X oil.
- Extra: Fast confocal imaging, fast widefield imaging including Fura2 Ca+, Fast volumetric (XYZ) imaging. Motorized x/y-stage allows tiling, live cell imaging
- Software: For PC and/or Mac: NIS-Elements Viewer, ND2 Reader for ImageJ.
Choosing a microscope
If you want more details about the different microscopes we have compiled a sheet for you under More information. The information may be useful when choosing between different systems.
You are always welcome to contact us if you need further information or guidance.
More Information

Gallery
Enjoy a collection of images made with microscopes within our facility!