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Blue Morpho Butterfly, 1996

A close-up of a mounted blue morpho butterfly shows its unique iridescent sheen. These mesmerizing insects, indigenous to the rain forests of Central and South America, get their cobalt hue not from pigment but from the thousands of semitransparent scales that filter blue from the visible spectrum and radiate it out from the wings.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "The Quest for Color," July 1999, National Geographic magazine)

Photograph by Cary Wolinsky