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EXPERIMENTAL SETUP: A Point Source Microscope (PSM) was mounted on a motorized vertical stage above a 25 mm diameter, 200 mm efl lens sitting above a plane mirror. A square black paper mask with an 8 mm diameter hole was placed over the lens as shown in the figure below to give an f/25 aperture. […]

Customers purchasing a PSM often ask me if we offer mounting hardware for the PSM like x-y-z stages. MY ANSWER HAS BEEN “NO”, BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS OF USING THE PSM THAT IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE TO MEET EVERYONE’S DIFFERENT NEEDS. IN FACT, THE ANSWER IS “YES!” The centering station is a tall, […]

Can the PSM find best focus of an f/25 optical system to less than ± 10 μm? SOMEWHAT SURPRISINGLY, YES, TO ABOUT ± 2 ΜM. You scan axially through best focus several times and plot the number of pixels above threshold versus scan distance. The curve is quadratic and the derivative of the curve fit […]

The MicroFinish Topographer helped bring you this spectacular image of the sun. The smoothness criterion on the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope primary mirror was a scatter specification. This was a problem in two respects, the mirror substrate was Zerodur and the scatter angle was too close to specular to measure with a scatterometer. The […]

A combination of the Auto Gain function of the Point Source Microscope (PSM) and the use of an Axicon grating make centering of severely misaligned lenses easy. The lenses in the cell are misaligned far enough that light in the center of the aperture barely makes it through the lens. The PSM video screen displays […]

Recently a customer was using the Point Source Microscope (PSM) to align a slow, singlet objective lens and find its focus.  The customer had a plane retro mirror behind the objective and should have seen a nice round spot at best focus. Instead, he saw a vertical line image as in the following screen shot […]