Seeing magnetism on an atomic level Electrons tunneling from the magnetized tip of a scanning tunneling microscope into the surface of a material can reveal the material's magnetic structure. Although researchers have used the technique on simple nanostructures, they've had trouble preparing the tip in just the right way to visualize the magnetic order in more exotic materials. Enayat et al. used a tip with a magnetic cluster on its apex to reveal patterns of magnetic ordering in the material Fe _1+y Te, which becomes superconducting by substituting Te with Se atoms. The researchers prepared the tip by simply picking up atoms from the surface of the material. Science , this issue p. 653