{"id":18150,"date":"2016-06-13T13:02:07","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T13:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/research\/researchers-discover-how-butterfly-wings-appear-bright-and-colorful\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T11:50:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T06:20:46","slug":"researchers-discover-how-butterfly-wings-appear-bright-and-colorful","status":"publish","type":"research","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/researchers-discover-how-butterfly-wings-appear-bright-and-colorful","title":{"rendered":"Researchers discover how butterfly wings appear bright and colorful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">How are the wings of butterflies so colorful and bright? While it is known that the wings have photonic crystals, which can reflect light of only a particular color, how they are arranged has been a mystery. To find out more about it, a group of physicists in UC San Diego used ptychography, an advanced imaging technique, and the Advanced Photon Source at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to take a closer look at the internal nanostructure of the tiny &#8220;scales&#8221; that make up the butterfly wing. They found that the tiny wing structures consist of &#8220;highly oriented&#8221; photonic crystals. Moreover, the crystals have irregularities that probably enhance light-scattering properties through an effect called light localization. This makes the butterfly wings appear brighter and more colorful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Read more in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2016\/06\/160610173507.htm\">Science Daily<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33313,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"new_tags":[],"series":[],"subject":[2873],"class_list":["post-18150","research","type-research","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","subject-physics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Researchers discover how butterfly wings appear bright and colorful | Editage Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/researchers-discover-how-butterfly-wings-appear-bright-and-colorful\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Researchers discover how butterfly wings appear bright and colorful | Editage Insights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How are the wings of butterflies so colorful and bright? While it is known that the wings have photonic crystals, which can reflect light of only a particular color, how they are arranged has been a mystery. 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