In what could prove to be a major breakthrough in quantum memory storage and information processing, German researchers have frozen the fastest thing in the universe: light. And they did so for a record-breaking one minute. (from io9.com)

The Practical Optics Workshop (POW) is a set of focused activities outside of the regular curriculum that provide graduate students opportunities to learn valuable practical skills.  The goal of POW is to fill the gap between the classes and the actual research work.  It covers skills that are broadly need for graduate students’ research and their future employment. The main organizer of this workshop is Dr. Ping Zhou from LOFT. Faculties through out the College of Optical Sciences will participate teaching. Test runs for some of the sub-workshops are already under going. The official kicked off will be in the coming semester. A more detailed introduction can be found here:

http://www.loft.optics.arizona.edu/documents/presentations/POW_Introduction-student.pptx

A novel telescopic contact lens has been developed by engineers led by Joe Ford at UC San Diego. The lens can add a 2.8x optical zoom to normal vision when its mode is switched with a polarized glasses. The design uses 4 aspherical reflective surfaces and a diffractive optical element to achieve the performance and keep the lens wearable (1.17 mm thick) at the same time. The work was originally published on Optical Express. As an optical testing group, we are thinking: “how to test it”?

http://www.comagenius.net/2013/07/switchable-telescopic-contact-lens.html#.UeWQIo3VCao

http://scitechdaily.com/engineers-develop-a-telescopic-contact-lens/

This video explains how astronomers search for exoplanets (planets outside the Solar System). The techniques applied are all based on optics, which gives a background knowledge explaining why works done by our group are important.

http://www.phdcomics.com/tv/#039

An article in the local magazine, Desert Leaf, talks about the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab (SOML) and the giant mirrors under fabrication there. Follow the link below, and the article is on P 32-35.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73190213/Desert_Leaf_SOML.pdf

Tamer Elazhary received the 2013 Micheal Kidger Memorial scholarship for optical design.  Congratulations!

More about the scholarship.

The 2013 Computer Generated Holography and Diffractive Optical Elements Workshop and Optics of Imaging in Lithography Workshop, both directed by professor Tom D. Milster, will soon hit the halls of the Meinel Building. Read mroe…

College of Optical Sciences (OSC) at Univ. of Arizona hosts the National Academy of Engineering Regional Meeting on May 20 — and anyone in Arizona or elsewhere with a strong technical interest in astronomy or optics is welcome to attend. Admission is free of charge, but registration is required by May 10. Read more…

The $54k grant is offered by  The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy for a time of one year. Read more…

After casting the second of seven mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope in January, the UA GMT staff are steadily casting the third and zooming in on a new perspective on the universe. Read more…