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Lyot Stop
A Lyot stop (also called a glare stop) is an optical stop, invented by French astronomer Bernard Lyot, that reduces the amount of flare caused by diffraction of other stops and baffles in optical systems. Lyot stops are located at images of the system's entrance pupil and have a diameter slightly smaller than the pupil's image. Examples of applications can be found in Ref. See also * Lyot filter * Lyot depolarizer * Coronagraph A coronagraph is a telescopic attachment designed to block out the direct light from a star or other bright object so that nearby objects – which otherwise would be hidden in the object's bright glare – can be resolved. Most coronagr ... References External linksNASA Coronagraphs by Bass et al. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aperture
In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image of the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that comes to a focus in the image plane. An optical system typically has many structures that limit ray bundles (ray bundles are also known as ''pencils'' of light). These structures may be the edge of a lens or mirror, or a ring or other fixture that holds an optical element in place or may be a special element such as a diaphragm placed in the optical path to limit the light admitted by the system. In general, these structures are called stops, and the aperture stop is the stop that primarily determines the cone of rays that an optical system accepts (see entrance pupil). As a result, it also determines the ray cone angle and brightne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Lyot
Bernard Ferdinand Lyot (2 7 February 1897 in Paris – 2 April 1952 in Cairo) was a French astronomer. Biography An avid reader of the works of Camille Flammarion, he became a member of the Société Astronomique de France in 1915 and made his first observations using the society's telescope on rue Serpente in Paris. He soon acquired a telescope and soon upgraded to a . From graduation in 1918 until 1929, he worked as a demonstrator at the École Polytechnique and studied engineering, physics, and chemistry at the University of Paris. From 1920 until his death he worked for the Meudon Observatory, where in 1930 he earned the title of ''Joint Astronomer of the Observatory''. After gaining the title, he earned a reputation of being an expert of polarized and monochromatic light. Throughout the 1930s, he labored to perfect the coronagraph, which he invented to observe the corona without having to wait for a solar eclipse. Most of this work implied painstaking long observation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lens Flare
A lens flare happens when light is scattered, or ''flared'', in a lens system, often in response to a bright light, producing a sometimes undesirable artifact in the image. This happens through light scattered by the imaging mechanism itself, for example through internal reflection and forward scatter from material imperfections in the lens. Lenses with large numbers of elements such as zooms tend to have more lens flare, as they contain a relatively large number of interfaces at which internal scattering may occur. These mechanisms differ from the focused image generation mechanism, which depends on rays from the refraction of light from the subject itself. There are two types of flare: visible artifacts and glare across the image. The glare makes the image look "washed out" by reducing contrast and color saturation (adding light to dark image regions, and adding white to saturated regions, reducing their saturation). Visible artifacts, usually in the shape of the apert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diffraction
Diffraction is the deviation of waves from straight-line propagation without any change in their energy due to an obstacle or through an aperture. The diffracting object or aperture effectively becomes a secondary source of the Wave propagation, propagating wave. Diffraction is the same physical effect as Wave interference, interference, but interference is typically applied to superposition of a few waves and the term diffraction is used when many waves are superposed. Italian scientist Francesco Maria Grimaldi coined the word ''diffraction'' and was the first to record accurate observations of the phenomenon in 1660 in science, 1660. In classical physics, the diffraction phenomenon is described by the Huygens–Fresnel principle that treats each point in a propagating wavefront as a collection of individual spherical wavelets. The characteristic pattern is most pronounced when a wave from a Coherence (physics), coherent source (such as a laser) encounters a slit/aperture tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical System
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Light is a type of electromagnetic radiation, and other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties. Most optical phenomena can be accounted for by using the classical electromagnetic description of light, however complete electromagnetic descriptions of light are often difficult to apply in practice. Practical optics is usually done using simplified models. The most common of these, geometric optics, treats light as a collection of rays that travel in straight lines and bend when they pass through or reflect from surfaces. Physical optics is a more comprehensive model of light, which includes wave effects such as diffraction and interference that cann ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Entrance Pupil
In an optical system, the entrance pupil is the optical image of the physical aperture stop, as 'seen' through the optical elements in front of the stop. The corresponding image of the aperture stop as seen through the optical elements behind it is called the ''exit pupil''. The entrance pupil defines the cone of rays that can enter and pass through the optical system. Rays that fall outside of the entrance pupil will not pass through the system. If there is no lens in front of the aperture (as in a pinhole camera), the entrance pupil's location and size are identical to those of the aperture. Optical elements in front of the aperture will produce a magnified or diminished image of the aperture that is displaced from the aperture location. The entrance pupil is usually a virtual image: it lies behind the first optical surface of the system. The entrance pupil is a useful concept for determining the size of the cone of rays that an optical system will accept. Once the size ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lyot Filter
A Lyot filter (polarization-interference monochromator, birefringent filter), named for its inventor and French astronomer Bernard Lyot, is a type of optical filter that uses birefringence to produce a narrow passband of transmitted wavelengths. Lyot filters are used in astronomy, particularly for solar astronomy, lasers, biomedical photonics and Raman chemical imaging. Basic principles This section describes how the Lyot filter's wavelength dependent transmission of light arises from birefrigence. Single-plate optical filter The Lyot filter relies on light's polarization property, a vector (Jones vector) perpendicular to light's path that has a fixed direction (linear polarization) or a time-varying rotating direction (circular or elliptical polarization). For a typical single-plate Lyot filter, light passes through three consecutive optical elements that modify the light's polarization: the first horizontal polarizer, a waveplate (retarder) and a second horizontal polarizer. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lyot Depolarizer
A or is an optical device used to scramble the polarization of light. An ideal depolarizer would output randomly polarized light whatever its input, but all practical depolarizers produce pseudo-random output polarization. Optical systems are often sensitive to the polarization of light reaching them (for example grating-based spectrometers). Unwanted polarization of the input to such a system may cause errors in the system's output. Types Cornu depolarizer The Cornu depolarizer was one of the earliest designs, named after its inventor Marie Alfred Cornu. It consists of a pair of 45° prisms of quartz crystal, optically contacted to form a cuboid. The fast axes are 90° apart and 45° from the sides of the depolarizer (see figure). Any ray entering the prism effectively passes through two wave plates. The thickness of these wave plates and therefore their retardance varies across the beam. The phase shift is given by \delta(y) = \frac _2 - n_12y - a). For an input be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coronagraph
A coronagraph is a telescopic attachment designed to block out the direct light from a star or other bright object so that nearby objects – which otherwise would be hidden in the object's bright glare – can be resolved. Most coronagraphs are intended to view the corona of the Sun, but a new class of conceptually similar instruments (called ''stellar coronagraphs'' to distinguish them from ''solar coronagraphs'') are being used to find extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks around nearby stars as well as host galaxies in quasars and other similar objects with active galactic nuclei (AGN). Invention The coronagraph was introduced in 1931 by the French astronomer Bernard Lyot; since then, coronagraphs have been used at many solar observatories. Coronagraphs operating within Earth's atmosphere suffer from scattered light in the sky itself, due primarily to Rayleigh scattering of sunlight in the upper atmosphere. At view angles close to the Sun, the sky is much bri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monthly Notices Of The Royal Astronomical Society
''Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society'' (MNRAS) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal in astronomy, astrophysics and related fields. It publishes original research in two formats: papers (of any length) and letters (limited to five pages). MNRAS publishes more articles per year than any other astronomy journal. The learned society journal has been in continuous existence since 1827 and became online only in 2020. It operates as a partnership between the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), who select and peer-review the contents, and Oxford University Press (OUP), who publish and market the journal. Despite its name, MNRAS is no longer monthly, nor does it carry the notices of the RAS. In 2024 MNRAS became a purely gold open access journal. History The first issue of MNRAS was published on 9 February 1827 as ''Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society of London'' and it has been in continuous publication ever since. It took its current name from the second vo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical Devices
An optical instrument is a device that processes light waves (or photons), either to enhance an image for viewing or to analyze and determine their characteristic properties. Common examples include periscopes, microscopes, telescopes, and cameras. Image enhancement The first optical instruments were telescopes used for magnification of distant images, and microscopes used for magnifying very tiny images. Since the days of Galileo and Van Leeuwenhoek, these instruments have been greatly improved and extended into other portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The binocular device is a generally compact instrument for both eyes designed for mobile use. A camera could be considered a type of optical instrument, with the pinhole camera and camera obscura being very simple examples of such devices. Analysis Another class of optical instrument is used to analyze the properties of light or optical materials. They include: *Interferometer for measuring the interference properties of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
