Optics

Tiny telescopes have long been mounted on glasses to help visually impaired people perform tasks, such as driving. But many potential users have resisted using them due to their appearance, whereby the lens is mounted atop the regular lens or above the frame. Moreover, the magnified view through the telescope is narrow. Now,...

Researchers at Auburn University have designed a rechargeable microscope illumination system that can be used by NASA scientists to observe microscopic life in places where there is no electricity. The patent-pending Ilumna 120, which contains a battery pack, condenser, and bulb with a built-in collimator, attaches to...

A team led by Jun Ye, a physicist at JILA - a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder - demonstrated an optical technique for simultaneously identifying tiny amounts of a broad range of molecules in the breath, potentially enabling a fast, low-cost...

A tiny sensor that can detect magnetic field changes as small as 70 Femtoteslas — equivalent to the brain waves of a person daydreaming — has been demonstrated at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The sensor could operate on a single AA battery and reduce the costs of non-invasive biomagnetic...

Researchers from Princeton University have created an easy-to-produce material from semiconductors that has the rare ability to bend light in the opposite direction from all naturally occurring materials. This could lead to advances in high-speed communications, medical diagnostics, and detection of terrorist threats. The new...

University of Rochester (New York) researchers have developed custom- designed contacts for people with keratoconic eyes, which are rare but disabling. From the side, the eyes look more pointed or cone-shaped than round. The condition causes people to see halos, and double and triple images. About 1 in 2,000 people suffer from the...

As noted in the article "Mini CW Lasers Enable Next-Generation Bioinstrumentation" in May's edition of Photonics Tech Briefs (PTB), continuous-wave (CW) lasers have helped advance research in fields such as cell sorting and DNA sequencing. Written by Jurgen Niederhofer, product manager of Newport's Spectra-Physics Lasers...

A high-birefringence optical material is needed suitable for implementation in optical systems. The material also should feature high hardness making it amenable to standard polishing and manufacturing processes, low CTE (coefficient of thermal expansion), low CTRI (coefficient of thermal refractive index), low absorption at...

MIT researchers have developed a new type of laser based on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) for taking high-resolution, 3D images of the retina. OCT uses light to obtain high-resolution, cross-sectional images of the eye to visualize subtle changes that occur in retinal disease.

Astronomers have woven NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of Saturn, its rings, and several of its moons into three movies. Each movie highlights unique times in the planet's 30-year waltz around the Sun. Hubble snapped only about a dozen images during each of these three events, so astronomers created software to extend the photos...

Using lasers and tuning forks, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a chemical weapon agent sensing technique called Quartz Laser Photo-Acoustic Sensing (QPAS) that promises to meet or exceed current and emerging defense and homeland security chemical detection requirements. The instrument is...

A phase sensor has been developed for use in aligning a segmented telescope mirror to within a fraction of a wavelength in piston. (As used here, "piston" signifies displacement of a mirror segment along the optical axis of the telescope.) Such precise alignment is necessary in order to realize...