Optical Mosaic

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

21 Nov 2025

Atmospheric Palette

At twilight, sunlight grazing the horizon is sculpted by Rayleigh scattering of the shorter-wavelength blue light and Mie scattering from larger particles and clouds, which scatter across a broader spectrum. The low-lying cloud layer acts as a diffuse reflector, blending warm orange near the horizon into the deep blue aloft—a dynamic interplay of light-matter interaction in nature.  

— Mohammad Hadi Sadri, Department of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan, Iran

14 Nov 2025

Supercontinuum Generation

A bright blue glow reveals a femtosecond filament forming inside a YAG crystal during supercontinuum generation. The intense laser pulses produce broadband light spanning the visible to the infrared.    

—Matteo Mandelli, VIBRA Lab, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

07 Nov 2025

Jack-o’-Lantern Cloud

At sunset, this cumulus cloud lit up like a giant jack-o’-lantern in the sky. Rayleigh scattering enriched the horizon with deep reds and oranges, while Mie scattering within the cloud’s droplets amplified the fiery glow. The silhouetted trees complete the Halloween-like illusion, showing how simple optical phenomena can paint scenes both eerie and beautiful.    

—Vahid Abbasian, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, USA

31 Oct 2025

Miniature Beauty 

The 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

24 Oct 2025

When Spectra Cross Paths 

The diffraction spectra of two fluorescent lamps, captured with a linear diffraction grating of 500 lines/mm placed in front of a smartphone camera. At the intersection, the overlap of red from one spectrum with blue from the other produces a pink region, illustrating additive color mixing in diffraction.

— Ana Karen Reyes, Universidad Tecnológica de Tulancingo, Tulancingo, Mexico

17 Oct 2025

Rainbow Galaxy Cube

White light passing through a multi-layer coated beam-splitter cube produces prism-like rainbows across its faces. Internal reflections, coating dispersion and local scattering/stress create the galaxy-like halo at the cube’s center.     

—Ramin Jamali and Mohammad Hadi Sadri, Department of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan, Iran

10 Oct 2025

Droplet Lens 

A water droplet resting on a blade of grass acts as a natural convex lens. It refracts light from the printed text behind it, producing a sharp yet inverted image of the letter “m.” This simple setup illustrates the basic principle of lens imaging in a way that is both intuitive and visually striking.    

—Vahid Abbasian, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, USA

03 Oct 2025

Interference Art 

An interference pattern on the water’s surface of a little fountain creates an artistic composition. Image taken with a Google Pixel 9 PRO.    

—Andrea Aiello, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany

26 Sep 2025