Multimedia / Photo Contest / 2022
Structural color
Structural color

Diffractive structures create the color of the Blue Morpho (Morpho peleides) butterfly wings.

—Samuel F. Pellicori, Senior Member, Optica, Santa Barbara, CA

01 Dec 2022

First Microcomputer Chip
First Microcomputer Chip

X-ray image of an Intel 4004 microprocessor packaging architecture. The 4004 microprocessor was the first programmable chip that provided functions of a general-purpose computer, i.e., customizable for different functions in electronic devices. It comprised a 16-pin package, a 4-bit central processing unit with an addressable memory of 640 bytes, 2300 transistors, and a clock speed of 740 kilohertz. Image taken with a ZEISS Xradia 620 Versa X-ray microscope.

—Herminso Villarraga-Gómez, ZEISS Industrial Quality Solutions, Michigan, USA

01 Dec 2022

Early Microprocessors
Early Microprocessors

Evolution of several early microprocessor chips that transformed the world of programmable electronic devices and enabled modern computers. Left to right: 1971 Intel P4004, first microcomputer chip (4-bit, 2300 transistors, 740 kHz); 1972 Intel D8008 (8-bit, 3500 transistors, 500 kHz); 1982 Intel A80186 (16-bit, 134000 transistors, 8 MHz); and 1985 Intel A80386DX (32-bit, 275000 transistors, 16 MHz). X-ray image taken with a ZEISS Xradia 620 Versa X-ray microscope.

—Herminso Villarraga-Gómez, ZEISS Industrial Quality Solutions, Michigan, USA

01 Dec 2022

Microprocessors Evolution
Microprocessors Evolution

An X-ray view of the microprocessor packages evolution showing the progress of miniaturization. Microprocessors ushered in the age of computer programming. Left to right: 1978 Intel D8086 (16-bit, 29000 transistors, 5 MHz); 1992 Intel A80486DX2 (32-bit, 1.2 million transistors, 50 MHz); 2004 Intel Pentium M 735 (32-bit, 140 million transistors, 1.7 GHz); and 2008 Intel Atom 230 (64-bit, 47 million transistors, 1.6 GHz). Image taken with a ZEISS Xradia 620 Versa X-ray microscope.

—Herminso Villarraga-Gómez, ZEISS Industrial Quality Solutions, Michigan, USA

01 Dec 2022

A Floral Optics Primer
A Floral Optics Primer

A primer on three basic optical tools used to exam plant life found in the garden.

—Karen Bridges, Artist, CA, USA

01 Dec 2022

Self Moire
Self Moire

Moire patterns are usually demonstrated with pairs of similarly ruled transparent sheets or seen as interference bands with a structured object recorded by a digital image sensor. Not so here. The Sun, a screen, and a balloon are all that’s needed to display this effect. The screen generates the structured shadow pattern on the balloon and simultaneously analyzes producing the ringed Moire seen here. As a bonus, on the balloon-side of the screen, one can demonstrate interesting projective geometry results. This is a simple setup to display these phenomena at a birthday party to any children with curiosity.

—Dennis Hancock, Meta Reality Labs

01 Dec 2022

The Sun
The Sun

The image was taken using a telescope (Celestron star sense explorer-DX) around 12 pm on (04/01/2022) at 137C, Kamarajar Salai, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India from (Latitude 9.912562° and Longitude 78.146213°). • A solar filter was used to protect the eye. The telescope was adjusted and the image was captured using a mobile phone camera (Realme XT – 64 Megapixel Quad Camera) by placing the it on the eyepiece of the telescope. • The sun is at center and the lens of the eyepiece is around the sun in the captured image.

—Shivasubramanian Gopinath, M.Sc., Student (2020-2022) at Thiagarajar college, Madurai, India

01 Dec 2022

Optical properties
Optical properties

Even simple glass disc have interesting optical properties. When light falls on the outer edge of the disc, the light changes direction, as Willebrord van Roijen Snell described in 1621 in the law named after him. The curved patterns created by the light rays inside the glass disc are called caustics and can be clearly seen in this photo.

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

01 Dec 2022

Simplest form of lens
Simplest form of lens

A glass sphere is the geometrically simplest form of lens. In this photo, one can clearly see how the lens magnifies the lines in the background. The spherical aberrations towards the edges are clearly visible, as well as another fascinating effect: the straight lines gradually become distorted into closed curves when looking towards the edges perpendicular to the lines in the background. Spherical lenses smaller than a millimeter in diameter are often used at the tip of an optical fiber for coupling light in and out of the fiber.

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

01 Dec 2022

Gateway to Microworld
Gateway to Microworld

“A nanoprinted micro-collimator, manufactured in B-PHOT’s Photonics Innovation Center, being inspected via a Keyence free-angle optical microscope.” The microstructure was printed by Dr Koen Vanmol using a Nanoscribe GT2.

—Mehdi Feizpour, B-PHOT - Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Etterbeek, Belgium

01 Dec 2022

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