Image of the Week

The Great Salt Alignment

The reflection of the sun, as it sets over Stansbury Island in the Great Salt Lake, Utah, USA, casts a long but one-side-truncated strip across the lake. The aligned viewing scope projects two images of the sun that can be viewed from a distance. (Photo taken on 27 July 2018 using a smartphone with its default photo setting.)

—Daqing Piao, Oklahoma State University

12 Nov 2018

A Röntgengraph of a Crookes tube

On occasion of the ‘World Radiography Day’, annually celebrated on November 8, this image shows a Crookes tube, or a classic version of what is often known as a Crookes-Hittorf tube, which is similar to the one used by Wilhelm C. Röntgen during his discovery of the X-rays in Nov 8, 1895. Röntgen was awarded with the first Nobel Prize in physics in 1901 in recognition for his achievement. The röntgengraph—or radiograph—above was taken with a Nikon XTH 225 ST system housing a modern X-ray tube.

—Herminso Villarraga-Gómez, Nikon Metrology, Brighton, MI, USA

05 Nov 2018

Glass Variations

The internal striae (changes in the refractive index) of a large piece of glass. Image taken at the Corning Glass Museum, a display showing glass types and the improvement in processing.

—Robert Schalck, Senior Member

29 Oct 2018

Precision optical light painting

The image was made by rotating a diffraction grating to obtain a multicolor circle, and then moving a microprism—also known as vintage faceted glasses—around the lens.

—Kyle L. Tate

22 Oct 2018

Multiphoton microscopy image

Multiphoton-microscopy image of ex vivo human dermal skin tissue. Second-harmonic generation (red) images collagen fibers; third-harmonic generation (green) shows the fiber interfaces; and two-photon excited autofluorescence (blue) captures the elastin fibers. Images aquisition was done with a custom LabView Script; image processing was done using ImageJ. Colors were arbitrarily assigned to the grayscale images.

—Ludo van Haasterecht, Amsterdam University Medical Centre -VUMC

15 Oct 2018

Cloud gate

Exotic reflecting image from the iconic “Cloud gate” in Chicago.

—Ning Hsu, The University of New Mexico

08 Oct 2018

Slice of a Flashlight

A sectional slice image and 3-D view of an adjustable-focus zoom LED flashlight, produced by X-ray computed tomography (CT). The flashlight was scanned with a Nikon XTH 225 ST CT system—using a tungsten reflection target—and the CT data were reconstructed with Nikon CT Pro 3D software. Visualization of the CT images was produced with Volume Graphics VGStudio MAX 3.2 software.

—Herminso Villarraga-Gómez, Nikon Metrology, Brighton, MI, USA

01 Oct 2018

Dining with Telescopes

LED ceiling lights, refracted through two water glasses on a dinner table that act as positive power lenses. The coupling of the focal distances creates a a domestic “telescope” that can be used to demonstrate simple geometrical-optics concepts. (Image was taken with a Samsung S7 phone.)

—Juan Tabernero, Anglia Ruskin University

24 Sep 2018

Laser cavity

Ti:Sapphire femtosecond laser cavity in the lab.

—Hemang Jani, University of Alabama in Huntsville

17 Sep 2018

$Diffraction from Sand$

Diffraction from Sand

Diffraction of light beam from sand in beam, causing loss of image clarity. [Taken from the 2009 OPN Photo Contest]

—Larry A. Donoso

10 Sep 2018

Optics & Photonics News