Multimedia / Image of the Week

Image of the Week

Striking images of optics and photonics, contributed by OPN readers

A Diatom, Up Close
A Diatom, Up Close

Label-free quantitative-phase image of the diatom Trigonium. Image was taken with an orientation-independent differential interference contrast (OI-DIC) microscope with a 60× water-immersion objective lens. The image width is 90 µm. Specimen was provided by diatom artist Osamu Oku (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5980661).[OPN 2022 Photo Contest Winner]

—Michael Shribak, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA, USA

13 Jan 2023

Superimposition of Light
Superimposition of Light

As demonstrated by Isaac Newton, prisms deflect light rays to varying degrees depending on the color of the light. This effect creates the fascinating superimpositions of the color gradients in this picture. [OPN 2022 Photo Contest Third Place]

—Susanne Viezens, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Erlangen, Germany

06 Jan 2023

Cold Plasma
Cold Plasma

A cold atmospheric-pressure plasma jet in a helium/deuterated-water (HDO) mixture in the lab of Grant Ritchie, University of Oxford, UK. The plasma is pulsed at 20 kHz and is probed by the laser beam of a fast mid-infrared dual-comb spectrometer (IRsweep, IRis-F1) to study changes in the energy state population density of HDO. [OPN 2022 Photo Contest Honorable Mention]

—Michele Gianella, Empa, Dübendorf, Switzerland

30 Dec 2022

Dancing Holiday Lights
Dancing Holiday Lights

Holiday LED lights in motion.

—Robert Schalck, Optica Senior Member (Emeritus)

23 Dec 2022

Metasurface Atom Trapping
Metasurface Atom Trapping

Camera image of an optical setup, showcasing the science cell with an integrated metasurface lens at the center, used to capture and image single Rb atoms.[OPN 2022 Photo Contest Honorable Mention]

—Amit Agrawal, Cindy Regal and Scott Papp, NIST, JILA-CU Boulder, CO, USA

16 Dec 2022

Soap Halos
Soap Halos

Laser scattering in Plateau borders. The “parlaseric circle” is a luminous ring generated by light scattering in foam or soap bubbles. The name was inspired by the atmospheric phenomena known as a parhelic circle. [OPN 2022 Photo Contest Honorable Mention]

—Adriana P.B. Tufaile, Soft Matter Lab, EACH-University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

09 Dec 2022

Krypton Clusters
Krypton Clusters

Krypton clusters—produced from supersonic expansion in vacuum (center) of krypton gas from a high-pressure nozzle (top)—are irradiated by a high-power, few-cycle laser (right) to produce soft X-rays, emitted in all directions. X-rays going through the vacuum-chamber differential pumping hole (left) are detected by a soft-X-ray spectrometer (Optica, doi: 10.1364/OPTICA.471084).[OPN 2022 Photo Contest Editor's Choice]

—Pierre-Alexis Chevreuil, Ultrafast Laser Physics Group, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

02 Dec 2022

Fiery Hourglass
Fiery Hourglass

The protostar within the dark cloud L1527, shown in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is embedded within a cloud of material feeding its growth. Ejections from the star have cleared out cavities above and below it, whose boundaries glow orange and blue in this infrared view.

—NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale, A. Pagan, and A. Koekemoer (STScI)

25 Nov 2022

Partial Solar Eclipse, in Reflection
Partial Solar Eclipse, in Reflection

A partial solar eclipse was captured with a mobile phone camera (iPhone 11) on 25 October 2022 in Utrecht, Netherlands. The camera didn't facilitate exposure time and stop to prevent saturation. Instead, the eclipsed sun appears as a reflection feature from the camera optics. Imaging in reflection off another dark mobile phone screen in order to check for additional attenuation caused colorful diffraction.

—Dirk Voigt, Ministry of Defence, Utrecht, Netherlands

18 Nov 2022

Afterglow
Afterglow

This composite image—stitched together from pictures taken from a drone—shows the atmospheric scattering effect called afterglow. It was taken on a cold evening in Oulu, Finland, just after sunset, at a temperature of around -10 °C.[OPN 2018 Photo Contest Editors’ Choice]

—Prateek Singh, University of Oulu, Finland

11 Nov 2022

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