A snowflake

© Don Komarechka/Science Photo Library

A snowflake

It turns out the old notion that each snowflake is unique is probably true (although it seems to us that it’d be awfully hard to confirm). Even so, the scientists who study snowflakes can put them into categories, based on the general shapes they form. This is an example of a stellar dendrite, so-called for its star shape and dendritic, or tree-like, branches. To create our photo, 38 separate images were aligned to convey the detail of each layer within the flake, which was less than a quarter-inch wide.