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If you can't unmodelock your laser, one thing you can do is fire it through
a big block of glass to stretch the pulses out into the many picosecond
regime.  This will help keep 2 photon effects from happening so you can
concentrate on 'CW' effects.  It's not perfect, but it is really easy to
implement.  Just put a glass block between the laser and your microscope, an
inch thick ought to do it.

Craig


On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 6:57 AM, Kate Luby-Phelps <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

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>
> I'd be interested to know if you can really operate the multiphoton laser
> in
> CW. I was advised by my manufacturer not to try.
>
> As an alternative we have been imaging dyes in this EX/EM range (especially
> IR Dye800) with a standard wide-field scope and a Cy7 filterset from
> Chroma.
> We have tried both the halogen lamp (switched to the epi illumination
> position) or the Xenon. Both work surprisingly well. You might want to use
> a
> back-thinned CCD with extended red sensitivity. We have been using the
> Hamamatsu Orca BT 1024.
>
> This arrangement won't work for very weak signals but for most
> immunofluorescence applications we have been successful.
>
> Kate Luby-Phelps
>