Image of the Week

Striking images of optics and photonics, contributed by OPN readers

A red filter smaller than the illumination beam allows peripheral unfiltered light to reach a beam splitter, generating a yellow edge halo. The outgoing polarized beam produces sharp geometric images of the filter mount, replicated across the splitter faces due to internal reflections and optical beam division.

—Image by José Armando Escamilla, under the supervision of advisor Ana Karen Reyes in the optics laboratory led by Noel Ivan Toto Arellano, Universidad Politecnica de Tulancingo, Mexico

27 Mar 2026

Circular Clouds at Sunrise

Unusual circular clouds in the vicinity of the sunrise create a beautiful early morning sky.

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

20 Mar 2026

Curved Grid Illusion

Straight lines bend gracefully into a vivid display of distorted geometry under a plano-convex lens, revealing refraction and wavefront reshaping and showing how lenses sculpt light and subtly redefine our geometric intuition.

—Ramin Jamali, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran

13 Mar 2026

Bluebottle Fly Eye

A closeup view of the grating-like structure of a bluebottle fly’s eye. The intricate structure enhances the eye’s optical performance, aiding in light capture and potentially improving sensitivity to polarized light—an ability vital for navigation and prey detection.[OPN 2025 Photo Contest]

—Vittorio Cecconi, Emergent Photonics Research Centre, Loughborough, UK

06 Mar 2026

Tidal Shoreline

Temporary patterns are inscribed into apparently stratified surface layers by water flowing down a beach slope at low tide on the beautiful Scottish Isle of Skye. The upper layer particles display a bright glint from sunlight.

—Dirk Voigt, Leiden, Netherlands

27 Feb 2026

Plant 9 for our Spätlese

A cut of vine wood, which is used in the production of Spätlese (a white wine of German origin made from grapes harvested late in the season), is observed in autofluorescence using an InnoQuant slide scanner. The image title is a salute to the classic movie “Plan 9 from Outer Space” from Ed Wood.

—Sample preparation: Celia Perrin, LVBE - UHA; Data acquisition: Mathilde Bouakil, Innopsys; Image recontruction/rendering: Olivier Haeberlé and Bruno Colicchio, IRIMAS - UHA, France

20 Feb 2026

Underwater Shadows

Bright rims are visible around the edges of shadows of leaves floating in a pool. This effect, which is caused by refraction and focusing of light, was investigated in 1983 by Sir Michael Berry and Jo Hajnal.

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

13 Feb 2026

Naturally Focused Undulations

Naturally focused undulations on the back of a glass disk are illuminated by an LED and focused onto the translucent front as a network of caustics, exhibiting the geometries predicted by singularity theory.

—Sculpture by glass artist Alison Stott, following discussions with University of Bristol physicist Michael Berry; exhibited in the H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, UK

06 Feb 2026

Light Thread

A microscope image of an optical step-index fiber that has been processed with a CO2 laser. The laser focus rotates around the fiber and writes a track into the surface. The fiber feeding generates the helical structure. Light that is guided in the fiber cladding disrupts the total internal reflection to the surrounding medium. [OPN 2025 Photo Contest Honorable Mention]

—Steffen Böhme, Fraunhofer IOF, Jena, Germany

30 Jan 2026

Dispersion in the Lab

This photo was captured during an experiment in a first-year lab course. The white light beam passes through the transparent prism, and its different components (colors) travel at different speeds, causing the appearance of the spectrum. [OPN 2025 Photo Contest Honorable Mention]

—Yaryna Mamchur, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

23 Jan 2026

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Image of the Week