After Images

The beauty of light, as seen on the last page of each OPN issue

Naturally focused undulations on the back of a glass disk are illuminated by an LED and focused onto the translucent front as a network of caustics, exhibiting the geometries predicted by singularity theory.

—Sculpture by glass artist Alison Stott, following discussions with University of Bristol physicist Michael Berry; exhibited in the H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, UK

01 Mar 2026

Plant 9 for our Spätlese

A cut of vine wood, which is used in the production of Spätlese (a white wine of German origin made from grapes harvested late in the season), is observed in autofluorescence using an InnoQuant slide scanner. The image title is a salute to the classic movie “Plan 9 from Outer Space” from Ed Wood.

—Sample preparation: Celia Perrin, LVBE - UHA; Data acquisition: Mathilde Bouakil, Innopsys; Image recontruction/rendering: Olivier Haeberlé and Bruno Colicchio, IRIMAS - UHA, France

01 Feb 2026

Miniature Beauty

Spores (blue/purple structures) of a small tropical fern (Ceratopteris richardii). [5th Place, 2025 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition].

—Igor Robert Siwanowicz, HHMI, Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, Virginia, USA; image courtesy of Nikon Small World

01 Jan 2026

Oil Droplets Dispersed in Water

Oil droplets dispersed in water create a beautiful natural mosaic. Each droplet acts as a tiny lens, bending and shaping the light into unique patterns. A green digital screen placed beneath the setup provided the luminous background, allowing light to scatter, refract and transmit through the spherical surfaces. [OPN 2025 Photo Contest Editors’ Choice]

—Sritam Sethy Kumar, M. Pharm Student, Balasore, Odisha, India

01 Dec 2025

Shaping Light

The interplay of light and glass as the light transmits and reflects adds an extra dimension to this detail of a black-and-white glass ribbon sculpture exhibited at the Corning Museum of Glass, NY, USA.

—Catalin Florea, Lockheed Martin Space Glass sculpture: “Between fragments and whole, Sphere,” by Jeannet Iskander

01 Nov 2025

Salty Desolation

Landsat 8 image of the salt pan in Etosha National Park, Namibia, one of the largest in the world. The horizontal line across the image is the park fence. The wild patterns in this IR interpretation are from numerous episodes of water evaporation following seasonal rains. The surrounding blue shades are dry bushland savanna.

—USGS Landsat 8, data acquired 03/04/2014

01 Oct 2025

IR Filter on Artificial Tears

An IR filter (750–900 nm), placed in the center of a micrograph of artificial tear crystals with the field diaphragm fully open, reveals multiple wavelengths—from infrared in the center of the crystals to violet on the outer circumference.

—Baruc Zago Mazzocco, Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica Óptica y Electrónica, San Andrés Cholula, Mexico

01 Sep 2025

Polynomial Beauty

A 2D histogram on the complex plane of the number of solutions from a given set of polynomials generated from a set of 7×7 matrices. The heat map can be interpreted as a plot of the probability that a random matrix will have a characteristic polynomial with a solution in a certain location.

—Trra02, Wiki Science Competition 2023; CC-BY-4.0

01 Jul 2025

Milky Way dust emission

Milky Way dust emission as measured from the Planck satellite and converted into a polarization pattern of B-modes, a spiral type of polarization imprinted in the microwave sky.

—Uroš Seljak, University of California, Berkeley, USA, Winner Wiki Science Competition 2019; CC-BY-4.0

01 Jun 2025

Fruit fly retina

Confocal image of a fruit fly retina expressing a toxic form of the RdgB protein, leading to degeneration.

—Guilliaume Thuery, Ireland, Wiki Science Competition 2023; CC-BY-4.0

01 May 2025

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After Images