Tsuchinshan–ATLAS comet photos album

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I have been following this new stargazer comet since the end of September. It was kind of a gamble to know if this comet would survive passing so close to the sun and survive. But thankfully, it did survive and what a spectacle it is giving us. It might not be as bright as Neowise in 2020, but this time, I have a better camera to capture it and the pictures are just amazing. Too bad the weather was so cloudy this week… These pictures and videos were taken with my Fujifilm XT4, with the 18-55 mm or the 50-140 …

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Reflections on AKL 2024: The Impact of AI and Emerging Photonics Technologies

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This year at the AKL Conference was prominently marked by discussions on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The rapid advancements in AI, significantly propelled by platforms like OpenAI and ChatGPT, have captured the attention of key decision-makers in leading companies such as Trumpf and Coherent. The plenary talk particularly emphasized the potential applications, implications, and the urgent need for Europe to act before falling behind. The debate highlighted concerns about the United States and China leading the way, while the European Union lags due to stringent regulations. A recurrent theme was the term “cyberphotonic,” which seems to blend photonics and virtualization, involving …

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Methods for Cleaning Optics in the Lab and Industry

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This post aims to provide comprehensive guidance on cleaning optical elements. While there is a wealth of information available online, particularly on suppliers’ websites, I want to consolidate all the knowledge I’ve acquired over the years working with lasers, fiber optics, and other optical equipment, including some tips and tricks. How to Clean an Optical Element Identifying the Optical Surface Is it a lens, a mirror, a filter, etc.? Optical elements can be categorized based on their material and the presence of a coating. Coatings play a crucial role: Identifying the Contaminant Contaminants can be broadly categorized into three types: …

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Raytracing in Rust!

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I have started a project that requires the use of a raytracer. Basically, I hope to make a library for rendering optical paths using raytracing and simulate the result that one would get by looking through the optical system. Hopefully, I would like to be able to write somewhere that I will have a couple of lenses here and there, give the parameters such as the refractive index and curvatures and diameters and get the resulting image on a focal plane. To do this, I need to start small, and I thought that the way to start small was to …

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My Five-Month Journey with AI: Expectations vs Reality

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So, 5 months ago, I have written a post about Artificial Intelligence and General Artificial Intelligence. You can see the tone from my first post was very optimistic, a little too much maybe, with the hope that things would accelerate soon. I have been using AI a lot recently and I want to report on my understanding of what AI can and can’t do and how to use it as effectively as possible. Small disclaimer: I have mostly used ChatGPT, and a little of the other Large Language Models (LLMs) like Bard and Llama, so I will mostly talk about …

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How do big telescopes look through the atmosphere – Adaptative Optics 101

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Continuing my series of post covering my talk from last Christmas about the use of lasers in space and astronomy. The topic today is adaptative optics. I’ll explain the reason why we need it, and how it works in simple terms. Enjoy. No surprise: telescopes are the main tool of astronomers. Since Newton, we have built countless telescopes of various sizes and shapes. And lately, we even send them to space. We have Hubble, the JSWT for the more famous, and a lot of other space telescopes less known. But why sending them to space? After all, space is difficult. …

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What is the difference between a regular lamp and a laser? A brief history of Optics and Lasers

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So this post and a bunch after this one are from a talk I presented at the end December on the topic of lasers in space and astronomy. The target the audience was members from astronomy groups in the region with some knowledge of optics but not necessarily lasers and the curious people that might be interested but have a physics background from high school. I tried to make it interesting for a wide audience, and I would say that it is accessible to some degree to someone in high school, maybe earlier? Anyway, the goal was to be entertaining, …

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Crepuscular rays from Neuchâtel

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Shadows of giants

Taken the 4th January 2023, with my Fujifilm XT4, XF50-140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR, at ISO 160, f2/8, 80mm and 1/250s exposure.

It was a nice cold morning that day, with two layers of clouds, one at the surface of lake Neuchâtel, and another layer at approx 3000m. Just enough to touch the tip of some summits in the prealps. The sun was rising and started to cast some interesting shadows along the way. It is a phenomenon that is commonly called crepuscular rays.

Although the shadows are actually perfectly parallel to one another, perspective gives the impression that the shadows converge toward the sun.

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Artificial intelligence and the new normal

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So that is it. I have been, like many others following what is the biggest paradigm shift of the past hundred years. In my opinion, the true next big step in human history that is being taken right now, as some people might seem to realize it, but also as many others simply ignore. In the early 20th century, the invention of the combustion motor changed everything. From the way people moved to the way people generated electricity, to how they worked. Basically, artificial intelligence is here to do the same, with unforeseen consequences. I have a history of being …

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My simple genetic algorithm in Python for polynomial curve fitting

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Take the shortest route, the one that nature planned Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Genetic algorithms are really interesting in my opinion. Not the most efficient, but rather beautiful in the way they work. I especially like them because of the similarities that they share with life. Genetic algorithms are special kind of algorithms that work by modelling how natural selection works in the real world. I shouldn’t need to explain how evolution works, but for the sake of it, here I go. We have several individuals in a population, given their environment, some of the individual are better suited and reproduce, …

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