OAM Beam Reconstruction

An orbital angular momentum (OAM) beam with charge L=2, reconstructed using the extended Gerchberg Saxton phase retrieval technique. In the image, brightness corresponds to intensity and hue to phase. [OPN 2021 Photo Contest Second Place]

—Matthew N. Jacobs, The University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA

01 Dec 2021

Snow Summit

Vivid snow summit with a blizzard in dark night sky. Actually, it is the irregular border of a graphene oxide (GO) film (~140 nm) spin-coated on a silicon substrate (300-nm SiO2/Si) and captured by the KEYENCE VK-X1000 Laser Microscope. [OPN 2021 Photo Contest Third Place (tie)]

—Zhijun Xu, College of Science, Zhejiang University of Technology, Zhejiang, China

20 Nov 2021

Polychromatic Sand

White sand from Chapoquoit Beach (Falmouth, MA, USA) in transmitted light under polychromatic polarization microscope, 4× objective lens (nature.com/ articles/srep17340). [OPN 2021 Photo Contest Third Place (tie)]

—Michael Shribak, Marine Biological Laboratory, University of Chicago, IL, USA

01 Dec 2021

A Cognac Summer Solstice

A snifter and a splash of cognac make a splendid liquid lens that captures summer solstice boating on the Foster City, CA, USA lagoon with warmth and fascination. Spectral filtering was the intended purpose, but the variable Lagrange invariant across the field with the use of a Nikon D7100 now seems obvious in retrospect. [OPN 2021 Photo Contest Honorable Mention]

—Dennis M. Hancock, Woodside, CA, USA

01 Dec 2021

Colorful Leaves

Sunlight diffracted and reflected by CDs over the white leaves of a Breynia distichia plant. Image taken with an iPhone 6s plus without retouching. [OPN 2021 Photo Contest Honorable Mention]

—Natalith Palacios-Ortega, Centro de Investigaciones en Optica, Mexico

01 Dec 2021

Revealing Infrared

Composite image of a pre-cancerous colon section acquired on an infrared (IR) microscope reveals intricate structures that highlight underlying chemical composition. IR imaging enables label-free disease diagnostics using the intrinsic molecular contrast. The image was taken in the Chemical Imaging and Structures Laboratory headed by Prof. Rohit Bhargava at the Beckman Institute. [OPN 2021 Photo Contest Honorable Mention]

—Yamuna Phal, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

01 Dec 2021

Mirror mirror on the ball

An array of 5-mm-diameter chrome steel ball bearings on a green foil is illuminated by, and photographed through, a single LED ring light placed a few centimeters above the array. Each ball bearing (acting as a convex mirror) forms a demagnified, virtual image of the 70-mm diameter ring light. This image is re-imaged by all the neighbouring ball bearings that can “see” it, and that image is re-imaged again, and again, ... [OPN 2021 Photo Contest Honorable Mention]

—Aongus McCarthy, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland

01 Dec 2021

Time Resolved Emission

Fluorescent tubes go through one on-off-on cycle every 1/120 second. Each row of pixels is exposed sequentially, adding up to 1/30 second or four full cycles going from top to bottom. Purple light emitted early in the cycle comes from mercury and short-lived states in the phosphor mixture, and green light emitted late in the cycle comes from a long-lived Tb(3+) state in the phosphor mixture that continues emitting light at 542 nm for several ms after mercury emission turns off. [OPN 2021 Photo Contest Editors’ Choice]

—Dan Deptuck, CMC Microsystems, Ontario, Canada

01 Dec 2021

Dichroic Wall Art

A light art sculpture using dichroic color filters, linear variable filters, and a single light source with a gobo to project a sheet of white light across the dichroic filters. The dichroic filters transmit certain wavelengths and reflect the non transmitted wavelengths. By using those properties and angles, one can mix colors and create amazing art.

—Rick Hutton, InLight Gobos, Dallas, TX, USA

01 Dec 2021