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Ultraviolet Lepidoptera

It glows! It glows!

Ultraviolet light has a wavelength between 10 nanometers and 400 nanometers, this puts it below violet and indigo on our good old rainbow and outside of the visible light spectrum our eyes can detect. Good times happen when ultraviolet light hits certain materials – some cheerful objects will fluoresce and emit visible light when hit with these otherwise invisible rays.

Paper or fabric brighteners, glow sticks, many coloured plastics, some organic fluids – these will light up under the blacklights you see at nightclubs or the kinds of parties to which I am seldom invited. Caterpillars don’t get invited to these sorts of events either, which is a shame as some of them could teach us a thing or two about maintaining style under a UV light.
Let’s see what glows.