Many of you may know that I spent my professional career working in the field of optical engineering. I'm retired now but my educational background included degrees in physics and astronomy, which were interests that ultimately sprung from an early interest in telescopes. I just found this old video showing how I first got interested in optical phenomenon. Take a look and I think that you'll understand why I had no choice but to end up studying optics in more detail! Both Sides of the Mirror.mp4John
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Hi John, such a funny and cute video ! I'm also in optical engineering with a BSC degree. I got interested in optics once I understood that it would help me to build refractors and/or reflectors  but of course, optics and photonics are much more than that ! Gabriel
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Hi John, I also have a degree in optical sciences. I'm retired now but spent my career setting up optical laboratories. I spent over 5 years designing and building refractors for a company I was partners in. We designed and ground lenses to restore University Observatory refractors in Europe and Australia. We also produced lenses for some military projects. My Dad was an optometrist so the eyes and optics was in my blood. Of course, I'm not on your level John  but share your interest. Mike
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Good to hear from you guys! @Dave Erickson and @Richard Shagam are two other professional optics guys who participate here on AB and I’m sure that there are a few more that I’m just not thinking of at the moment. I know that probably 1/3 of the students at the Wyant College of Optical Sciences got interested in optics by way of telescopes and astronomy so it’s not surprising to find that many of us still participate in astronomy as a hobby. I invite others optics folks on the site to let us know that you are here. John
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Yep, it was telescopes that got me going into optical engineering. My father, an ophthalmologist, built a 3" reflector from Edmund Surplus parts and a cardboard tube for my older sister, who was interested in astronomy and rockets and such in the '50s. I got to look through it, too, and when I was 14, learned I could grind my own telescope mirror at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago–it came out pretty good! I even won an award for my telescope there for 'Best design idea' by making an equatorial mount out of plumbing fittings–it really wasn't very good, but I was proud of the plaque (I still have it)! Living in Chicago, the telescope was hard to use, but I still got to see a few things with difficulty. Anyway, comes college and a major in physics at the University of Wisconsin, and I found that the only thing that really interested me was optics. When looking for graduate school programs, I stumbled upon the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona and decided that was for me. Even got to grind and polish another mirror in a course called 'Optical Fabrication Methods' taught by Aden Meinel. (We called the class 'Occupational Therapy for Optical Engineers'.) I still have that mirror 50 years later, although it really needs to be installed in a proper OTA. I got my PhD under Jim Wyant and went on to work on such things as adaptive optics for space-based lasers at the Air Force Weapons Lab and even got to design, at Sandia Labs, the objective lens for the laser instrument that scanned the leading edge of the Space Shuttle wing post-Columbia accident. It was a fun career–all because my dad stuck a little round mirror in a cardboard tube for my big sister! Now retired, I'm having a blast taking astropics with equipment that wasn't even available to us as professionals.
Richard
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That video looks very like my initial attempts at collimating my RC!
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Thanks for sharing, and were you able to solve the mystery in the end?  |
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Yes. We built a theory based on portals through multidimensional space-time manifolds that nicely explains the effect…
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Cute video john @John Hayes , I think we all share the wonder! I too have a 50++ year career in optics from humble ATM beginnings. I posted a few ATM instruments over the years, from the first scope in 1962 ... https://app.astrobin.com/u/hbastro?i=1mibwj#gallerytook a 25 year break from ATM work from 1975 to 2000... Dave
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John Hayes:
Many of you may know that I spent my professional career working in the field of optical engineering. I'm retired now but my educational background included degrees in physics and astronomy, which were interests that ultimately sprung from an early interest in telescopes. I just found this old video showing how I first got interested in optical phenomenon. Take a look and I think that you'll understand why I had no choice but to end up studying optics in more detail!
Both Sides of the Mirror.mp4
John Totally adorable! His curiosity says so much about children. Is that you when you were a child?
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Jerry Gerber:
Totally adorable! His curiosity says so much about children.
Is that you when you were a child? It's what I'm like now...
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That is absolutely hilarious John.
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John Hayes:
Jerry Gerber:
Totally adorable! His curiosity says so much about children.
Is that you when you were a child?
It's what I'm like now...  |
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My story goes all the way back to getting my first telescope when I was 12. It was a 60mm Tasco refractor and with that humble instrument I saw so many things for the first time. It was a very effective gateway drug and I've been hooked ever since. With the help of the Edmonds book I attempted my first 8" mirror a few years after, it barely worked but I learned a lot. My first real telescope was an old orange tube C8, back in the day when Celestron would still sell these on time to an 16 year old kid, no questions asked. In my very early 20's I got serious and with the help of Jim Riffle at AstroWorks I made a 10" mirror that was really good. I also completed a 4" refractor doublet that performed beyond my expectations. Of course, life's twist and turns pulled me in and out of the hobby but I always came back. In the early 2000's I fabricated and sold premium mirrors for a living and that's where my education really started. The work involved a lot of refiguring and exposure to different optical systems and ways of testing. These days, commercial optics are so good, I'm not really tempted to make another grinding machine and start slinging grit but it's nice to know that I could. There's something about the wonder of what bits of glass can do that has never left me and I'm sure it never will.
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John, did you do a wave front analysis on that 1 meter mirror?
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