Image of the Week

Earth from the Moon

Image of Earth taken by the far-UV camera/spectrograph left on the moon by the crew of Apollo 16.—Published in OPN, June 2006

—G. Carruthers (Naval Research Laboratory) and NASA

19 Jul 2019

Scratched Coating

Color effects around a scratch in an optical coating.[Taken from the 2012 OPN Photo Contest]

—Matthias Feinaeugle, Optoelectronics Research Centre, United Kingdom

15 Jul 2019

Fringes!

Multiple-exposure image of interference pattern fringes in a diverging HeNe laser exiting an interferometer.

—Matt Latta, College of Optical Sciences, Tucson AZ

08 Jul 2019

Noctilucent

The glow of noctilucent clouds (NLCs) in the southern Oregon sky on 9 June 2019. This is a very rare event, most NLCs are limited to polar regions (55 degrees north); these clouds were visible as far south as San Francisco (38 degrees north). The clouds are formed by the smoke (dust and crystals) left behind from meteoroids high in the atmosphere ~85km. Shot with a Nikon CoolPix. ISO 400 1 sec.

—Robert Schalck, Senior Member

01 Jul 2019

$Multiple Diffracted Beams$

Multiple Diffracted Beams

This image is made by exciting the pink dye in an hourglass toy with green laser beam (λ = ~532 nm), passed through the pointer's photonic crystal cap, producing multiple diffracted beams. The pink dye can be seen to fluoresce with beautiful golden orange color along the path of diffracted laser beams. Image taken with RedMi Note 7 Pro 48 MB Camera @ RAW mode and processed thereafter. My son Omar Khayyam helped processing the image.

—Syed Abuthahir K Ziaudeen, Dr. Zakir Husain College

24 Jun 2019

Interference Butterfly

Creation of this interference photograph began with opaque masks of green, blue, violet and black, with zones of partial transparency in areas of the photo where the color was to appear. The photosensitive element (PSE)—which was not panchromatic, but was sensitive only to the monochromatic light of the 632.8-nm illuminating laser—comprised a transparent base layer, a photosensitive layer, an index-matching fluid and an angular reflecting layer. The colors in the photograph arise from the different angles of incidence that the wave normal of the laser beam (expanded to a center diameter of around three inches) made with the PSE. The incident light interfered with the reflected light to form standing waves that were recorded by the PSE as partially reflecting, equally spaced layers. The spacing of those layers, when the recorded photograph is viewed in white light, determines the color reflected to the viewer’s eye.

—George M. Sawyer, Independent Scientist

17 Jun 2019

Ferrohydrodynamic Lens

A ferrohydrodymainc lens, edge-lit with 36 alternating red, green and white LEDs around its circumference, creates a colorful pattern when acted on by a ring magnet on its surface. Note the artificial “black hole” in the center where light goes around but not in.

—Timm A. Vanderelli, independent researcher

04 Jun 2019

Color Mixing

Additive mixing of the output of three colorful light sources results in the creation of new colors.

—Abdullah Rahnama, University of Toronto, Canada

03 Jun 2019

Femtosecond laser micromachining

Direct-laser-writing fabrication method is used to create waveguide structures inside fused silica.

—Abdullah Rahnama, University of Toronto

27 May 2019

F.R.O.G.

An experimental interferometric frequency-resolved optical gating (FROG) trace of an ultrashort laser pulse from a Ti:sapphire oscillator. The trace is presented using a custom Matlab colormap.

—Travis N. Jones, Ph.D. student, Ultrafast Optics Group, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

20 May 2019

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