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We have constructed solid Fabry-Perot narrow-band filters that can be used in systems having one arc second or better resolution. Our filters operate at H-alpha, have a three-inch aperture, and typical transmission of 70 per cent. However, the same technology can be applied to construction of filters as narrow as 0.05 A at any wavelength from 4200 to 11000 A.
Aerial photography revealing blue-green Anacystis phytoplankton blooms in the Potomac River is presented. Data scanned were near-IR, green, and yellow nadir radiance; concurrent ground measurements are correlated with these data, including salinity, Secchi disk depth, chlorophyll a concentration, and river depth. In nonbloomed areas, R (radiance) is proportional to the reciprocal of Secchi depth for the green and yellow filters; in bloomed areas, R is constant for the green filter and random for the near-IR and yellow filters.
Solid state filter with active crystal element increases sensitivity and resolution of passive and active spectrometers. Filter is capable of ranging through infrared and visible spectra, can be built as portable device for field use, and is suitable for ecological surveying, for pollution detection, and for pollutant classification.
Filter includes partial polarizer between birefrigent elements. Plastic film on partial polarizer compensates for any polarization rotation by partial polarizer. Two quarter-wave plates change incident, linearly polarized light into elliptically polarized light.
The paper presents here the first two full-disk solar Dopplergrams obtained with the new 1024 x 1024-pixel CCD camera which has recently been installed at the 60-Foot Tower Telescope of the Mt. Wilson Observatory. These Dopplergrams have a spatial resolution of 2.2 arcseconds and were obtained in a total of one minute of time. The Dopplergrams were obtained with a magnetooptical filter which was designed to obtain images in the two Na D lines. The filter and the camera were operated together as part of the development of a solar oscillations imager experiment which is currently being designed at JPL for the Joint NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission. Two different images obtained by subtracting two pairs of the Dopplergrams from the initial time series are also included.
The Etalon Drive Motor (EDM), a precision etalon control system designed for accurate positioning of etalon filters in the IR spectrometer of the Cryogenic Limb Array Etalon Spectrometer (CLAES) experiment is described. The EDM includes a brushless dc torque motor, which has an infinite resolution for setting an etalon filter to any desired angle, a four-filter etalon wheel, and an electromechanical resolver for angle information. An 18-bit control loop provides high accuracy, resolution, and stability. Dynamic computer interaction allows the user to optimize the step response. A block diagram of the motor controller is presented along with a schematic of the digital/analog converter circuit.
The use of the magnetooptic filter to observe solar magnetic fields in the potassium line at 7699 A is described. The filter has been used in the Big Bear videomagnetograph since October 23. It gives a high sensitivity and dynamic range for longitudnal magnetic fields and enables measurement of transverse magnetic fields using the sigma component. Examples of the observations are presented.
We demonstrate a new optical correlator in which the correlation peak intensity is increased when the matched input object is moving. The basic configuration of the correlator is the same as a VanderLugt optical correlator consisting of a photorefractive crystal. The principal of this new correlator is based on the dynamic grating erasure property of photorefractive materials. The detail of this principle is described.
Spectrally tunable liquid crystal filters provide numerous advantages and several challenges in space applications. We discuss the tradeoffs in design elements for tunable liquid crystal birefringent filters with special consideration required for space exploration applications. In this paper we present a summary of our development of tunable filters for NASA space exploration. In particular we discuss the application of tunable liquid crystals in guidance navigation and control in space exploration programs. We present a summary of design considerations for improving speed, field of view, transmission of liquid crystal tunable filters for space exploration. In conclusion, the current state of the art of several NASA LaRC assembled filters is presented and their performance compared to the predicted spectra using our PolarTools modeling software.
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Devices with two or more coupled resonators to produce narrow spectral responses due to interference of signals that transmit through the resonators and techniques for operating such devices to achieve certain operating characteristics are described. The devices may be optical devices where optical resonators such as whispering gallery mode resonators may be used. In one implementation, at least one of the coupled optical resonators is a tunable resonator and is tuned to change its resonance frequency to tune the spectral response of the device. The described devices and techniques may be applied in optical filters, optical delays, optical waveform generators, and other applications.
Electronically tunable lithium niobate optical filter utilizing collinear acousto-optic diffraction in anisotropic medium
Consideration is given to transitioning of optical processing into systems (TOPS), optical correlator hardware, phase-only optical correlation filters, optical distortion-invariant correlation filters, and optical neural networks. Particular attention is given to a test target for optical correlators, a TOPS electronic warfare channelizer program, a portable video-rate optical correlator, a joint transform correlator employing electron trapping materials, a novelty filtered optical correlator using a photorefractive crystal, a comparison of correlation performance of smart ternary phase-amplitude filters with gray-scale and binary input scenes, real-time distortion-tolerant composite filters for automatic target identification, landscaping the correlation surface, fast designing of a circular harmonic filter using simulated annealing, feature-based correlation filters for distortion invariance, automatic target recognition using a feature-based optical neural network, and a holographic inner-product processor for pattern recognition.
The transmitted wavefronts of optical filters for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) are characterized using the Wildly and Openly Modified Broadband Achromatic Twyman Green (WOMBAT) Interferometer developed in the NASA/GSFC Optics Branch's Diffraction Grating Evaluation Facility (DGEF). Because only four of thirty-three of ACS's optical bandpass filters transmit the 633 nm light of most commercial interferometers, a broadband interferometer is required to verify specified transmitted wavefront of ACS filters. WOMBAT's design is a hybrid of the BAT interferometer developed by JPL used for HST Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) filters and a WYKO 400 phase shifting interferometer. It includes a broadband light source, monochromator, off-axis, parabolic collimating and camera mirrors, an aluminum-coated fused silica beam splitter, flat retroreflecting mirrors for the test and reference arms, and a LTV-sensitive CCD camera. An outboarded, piezo-electric phase shifter holds the flat mirror in the interferometer's reference arm. The interferometer is calibrated through interaction between the WYKO system's software and WONMAT hardware for the test wavelength of light entering the beam splitter. Phase-shifted interferograms of the filter mounted in the test arm are analyzed using WYKO's Vision' software. Filters as large as 90 mm in diameter have been measured over a wavelength range from 200 to 1100 nm with a sensitivity of lambda/200 rms at lambda = 633 nm. Results of transmitted wavefront measurements are shown for ACS fixed band pass and spatially-variable bandpass filters for a variety of wavelengths.
An acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) is employed to generate a display by driving the AOTF with a RF electrical signal comprising modulated red, green, and blue video scan line signals and scanning the AOTF with a linearly polarized, pulsed light beam, resulting in encoding of color video columns (scan lines) of an input video image into vertical columns of the AOTF output beam. The AOTF is illuminated periodically as each acoustically-encoded scan line fills the cell aperture of the AOTF. A polarizing beam splitter removes the unused first order beam component of the AOTF output and, if desired, overlays a real world scene on the output plane. Resolutions as high as 30,000 lines are possible, providing holographic display capability.
An acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) is employed to generate a display by driving the AOTF with a RF electrical signal comprising modulated red, green, and blue video scan line signals and scanning the AOTF with a linearly polarized, pulsed light beam, resulting in encoding of color video columns (scan lines) of an input video image into vertical columns of the AOTF output beam. The AOTF is illuminated periodically as each acoustically-encoded scan line fills the cell aperture of the AOTF. A polarizing beam splitter removes the unused first order beam component of the AOTF output and, if desired, overlays a real world scene on the output plane. Resolutions as high as 30,000 lines are possible, providing holographic display capability.
An optical filter includes a dielectric waveguide layer, supporting waveguide modes at specific wavelengths and receiving incident light, a corrugated film layer, composed of one of a metal and a semiconductor and positioned adjacent to a second surface of the waveguide layer and a sensor layer, wherein the sensor layer is capable of absorbing optical energy and generating a corresponding electrical signal. The metal film layer supports a plurality of plasmons, the plurality of plasmons producing a first field and is excited by a transverse mode of the waveguide modes at a wavelength interval. The first field penetrates the sensor layer and the sensor layer generates an electrical signal corresponding to an intensity of received incident light within the wavelength interval.
Optical image-correlating system made rotationally invariant. Experiment shows circular-harmonic filter generated optically. Hologram made by phase-shifted-double-exposure procedure. Filter used in optical image-recognition system based on correlation between target (image to be recognized) and matched spatial filter. In addition to usual invariance under translation of target, circular harmonic filter invariant under rotation of target; peak intensity of illumination at origin of correlation plane does not vary when target rotated about optical axis.