Optics & Photonics News

This is a live image of the of Diatom Arachnoidiscus. The picture shows the diatom's silicified cell wall, which forms a pillbox-like shell composed of overlapping halves that contain intricate and delicate markings. The picture was taken with the polychromatic polscope. An eye or camera can directly see the colored polarization image through the ocular with brightness corresponding to retardance and color corresponding to the slow axis azimuth. [Winner 2017 After Image photo contest.]

—Michael Shribak, Marine Biological Laboratory

20 Nov 2017

Fibers and dyes

This image shows a number of optical phenomena, starting with a green laser (532 nm Nd:YAG) guided by a multimode silica optical fiber to a vial containing an organic dye (Rhodamine 6G) that absorbs the green laser light and emits red light. The blue shade across part of the picture is from the spectrometer computer that analyses the dye emission. Captured at the University of Adelaide in the Chemical Sensing laboratory of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics. [Second place 2017 After Image photo contest.]

—Georgios Tsiminis, University of Adelaide

20 Nov 2017

$Diffracted Supercontinuum$

Diffracted Supercontinuum

Scattering, multiple refraction, and caustics generated from colourless water beads illuminated by a diffracted supercontinuum [Third place 2017 After Image photo contest.]

—Goery Genty, Tampere University of Technology

20 Nov 2017

A Multiplexing Stream

The beams from three different wavelength laser pointers pass through a tank of water, and exit into a single water stream. Once in the stream, the beams can be seen reflecting at the water-air interface, as a result of total internal reflection, and following the curved path of the water stream. [Honorable mention 2017 After Image photo contest.]

—Aongus McCarthy, Heriot-Watt University

20 Nov 2017

Water droplets

Water droplets on a flower adopt almost hemispherical shapes. The resulting lenses greatly magnify the underlying petal surface. Direct sun shines as a diffraction star. [Honorable mention 2017 After Image photo contest.]

—Emilio Gomez-Gonzalez, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain

20 Nov 2017

Reflecting Beetles

Beetles from all over the world regard themselves in the mirror, and find that they are all left-handed circularly polarized. Shot with a Canon EOS 450D through a circular polarizer for photography oriented the wrong way around. [Honorable mention 2017 After Image photo contest.]

—Frans Snik, Universiteit Leiden

20 Nov 2017

Phases of a solar eclipse

Phases of the partial solar eclipse of August 21st, 2017

—Edgar Guevara, CONACYT-UASLP

20 Nov 2017

Illuminated Q-plate

A q-plate is illuminated by white light from behind and the transmitted light is recorded on camera after passing polarizer. Q-plates are liquid-crystal based optical elements that can produce spatially variant polarization patterns at transverse plane of a laser beam. This image was captured by Behzad Khajavi at Optics lab 105 at Colgate University.

—Behzad Khajavi, Colgate University

20 Nov 2017

Demonstration of Spectrometry

Red, Green and Blue diode lasers beams are passing through a Diffraction Grating (10^-6 m), showing larger deviation for larger wavelength.

—Adriana P. B. Tufaile, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil

20 Nov 2017

The Sentinel

A view of the 21 August solar eclipse through the arms of “The Sentinel,” a large metal sculpture by Albert Paley at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). A tight camera aperture (f/32) creates a “starburst” image, while reflections within the camera system cause colorful ghost images of the partially eclipsed sun.

—Grover Swartzlander, RIT

20 Nov 2017

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