Recent Newsletters - Optical Society of Southern California

Date: 10/2/2024
Subject: OSSC Newsletter - October 2024
From: OSSC Newsletter Editor

Newsletter Volume 29, Number 2
October 2024

From The Editor

It is an honor to serve as your newsletter editor for the 2024-2025 active period. My goal is to reinvigorate the monthly Newsletter in email format and to emphasis that the OSSC Newsletter is for and about the OSSC members - Individual Members, Corporate Members, and Student Members.

Our September meeting marked the start of the 2024-2025 program year and what a start it was. From the elevation of four outstanding OSSC members to Fellow to the fantastic presentation of by Dave Hasenauer (one of the new Fellows), the September meeting was fantastic.

What made the event truly memorable, however, was the heartfelt recognition of Prof. Alex Small with an OSSC Lifetime Achievement Award and the many touching testimonials by family, friends, former students, and colleagues on behalf of Alex. It's public knowledge that Alex is battling illness, but that night Alex demonstrated an inspiring grace and strength that resonated with all who attended the meeting whether in person, on-line, or in spirit.

This is volume 29 of the Images Newsletter. Volume 1 dates back to 1995. The history of Society communications is a bit murky before that. It is documented that when the Society was formed in 1951 a letter was circulated among the optics community along with return post cards. It is reasonable to assume that a similar system was use for meeting announcements and reservations during the early years of the Society.

In 1995, Images originated in paper form, sent through US mail, as the primary method of communicating meeting announcements and Society news with the membership. In about 1998, the newsletter was made available as a downloadable pdf from the website. In 2009, issues of Images dating back to October 1998 (Volume 4, No 10), became available to active members on our website. A few years later, members were allowed to opt out of the US mailed version of the newsletter. Eventually, the paper version was discontinued and replaced completely by the downloadable pdf.

The Newsletter suffered during the pandemic and was suspended in 2021. Donn Silberman revived the Newsletter in 2022 in email format as an eNewsletter published quarterly. These recent newsletters may be viewed in a browser from the OSSC website and are also archived as pdfs.

Volume 29 marks the re-establishment of Images as a regular Newsletter issued in email format before our regular meetings. We encourage you to share your thoughts, activities, and accomplishments with the rest of the Society by emailing us at Newsletter@ossc.org.

Images is your Newsletter.

We would love to hear from you!

Robert Cartland
OSSC Newsletter Editor 2024-2025

9 October 2024
OSSC Meeting

Precision Measurement of Aspheric Optical Surfaces –
A Personal Journey From University Research To Industry

Beneath the east wing of the University of Arizona football stadium at is the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory where mirrors as large as 8.4 m are cast in a large rotating furnace. The mirrors are ground and polished on one of two large polishing stations and wavefront tested with a tower-size interferometer. Leading much of the effort to test these mirrors is Dr. James Burge, the featured speaker at our October meeting. Dr. Burge leveraged his knowledge and experience testing these large optics to create his own company - Arizona Optical Metrology. He will share his journey at our October meeting.

Computer Generated Hologram Test System - AOM

Attend On-line or In Person

In Person Reception: 6:00 pm
On-line Chat: 6:30 pm
Dinner: 7:00 pm
Presentation: 8:00 pm

Dinner Fee:

Members: $35, Non-Members: $45, Student Members: $10
Late Fees of $10, after 11:59 pm October 3
(No Fee for attending without dinner)

Samueli Academy
1901 N Fairview St, Santa Ana, CA 92706

Event Details & Registration

Outreach

$Outreach Steven Dang Diffractive Selfie$

Outreach Opportunities

The OSSC seeks volunteers for upcoming events being organized by our friends at Vital Link and The Girl Scouts of Orange County. Please contact the Outreach Chair if you are interested.

The Outreach Team would love your help!

More OSSC Outreach Information

Society News

Nicholas Croglio, David Hasenauer, Russell Rauch, and Brian Monacelli were formally elevated to OSSC Fellow during the September 11, 2024, OSSC meeting. Colleagues, family, and friends attended the meeting to support their years of dedication and service to the OSSC and the larger optics community.

Alex Small was honored with an OSSC Lifetime Achievement Award at a heartfelt ceremony at the September OSSC meeting. Dozens of family members, friends, colleagues, and former students attended to share personal accounts of what Alex meant to them as a colleague, teacher, mentor, and friend.

OSSC Corporate Member Golden Gate Light Optimization and AMP Optics published a paper with SPIE titled "LiDAR receiving three-element range-compensating lens optical design for automotive autonomy and advanced driver assist".

OSSC Corporate Member Spectrum Scientific's white paper on DUV and VUV optical mirror coatings explores the advantages of high reflectivity coatings. These coatings offer improved reflectivity in multi-element optical instrumentation, increasing throughput and sensitivity.

Photon Valley Adjust-A-Ball Mirror Mounts

OSSC Corporate Member Photon Valley's innovative Adjust-A-Ball® mirror mount is designed with precision and user-friendliness in mind. Its unique center of mass design allows for an even distribution of the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), ensuring that temperature fluctuations do not affect optical alignment.

Optricks!

Ames Window

The Ames window or Ames trapezoid is a flat cutout trapezoid that is perceived to be a thick rectangular window by shading. When the window is rotated, most people falsely perceive the window to pause, reverse direction, and then slowly oscillate back and forth. This phenomenon was discovered by Adelbert Ames, Jr. in 1947 (1). Even stranger perceptual illusions occur when a ruler or other object, including a person, is placed inside the window.

There a many videos available that demonstrate the illusion, but this YouTube video, "The Illusion Only Some People Can See", produced by Veritasium in 2020, is among the best. I have viewed the video multiple times and continue to falsely perceive the window to be oscillating instead of rotating.

References:

1. Wikipedia.org Ames_window.

Image Above By: VanBuren

Board of Directors

Elected Officers

President: Nicholas Croglio

Vice President: Lisa Belodoff
Secretary: Donn Silberman
Treasurer: Steven Dang

Past President: Kevin Romero

Councilors:

Martin Hagenbuechle
Mark Helmlinger
Jack Latchinian

Appointed Voting Board Members

Arrangements: Cecily Brown

Memberships: Russell Rauch
Programs: Kenn Bates

Other OSSC Leaders

Communications: Cecily Brown

Corporate Memberships: Mark Gallagher
Fellows Chair: Harvey Spencer
Historian: T. Scott Rowe
Jobs Board Coordinator: Nicholas J Croglio Jr
Mt. Wilson Coordinator: T. Scott Rowe

Newsletter Editor: Robert Cartland
Outreach Chair: Donn Silberman
Student Memberships: Steven Dang
Webmaster: Robert Cartland

Arrangements Assistant: McGwire Herbert
Outreach Assistant: Steven Dang

Open Positions

Secretary's Assistant

Treasurer's Assistant
Video Coordinator
Zoom Coordinator

We would would love your help!

Please email OSSC President Nicholas Croglio to discuss how we can best put your talent, interests, and skills to use.

Attention Students

If you qualify as a Student Member, please contact Memberships to have your membership changed to Student Member. Please do so before registering for the next meeting, in order to receive the dinner discount.

Student Members are Individual Members who are currently enrolled in school at least part-time and are not working full-time.

Professional Education