Personal projects / Optics & light
Mirror telescope experiment
An adjustable concave-mirror and webcam setup, with an idea for remote single-point temperature sensing.
Open the numbered review →Optical assembly and test target
Photos 149–155
An experimental optical setup with a small webcam in the foreground and a slightly concave first-surface mirror behind it. I was exploring how to capture a distant target with the mirror and camera, using a simple adjustable structure.
A closer view of the curved mirror used in the camera experiment. Its reflective coating is on the front surface, and the curvature was used to bring light from the target toward the imaging arrangement.
The mirror sits in an adjustable mount inside the box. Several small screws let me make fine changes to its position and alignment while setting up the optical path.
The webcam used to capture the view through the experimental optics. It gave me a way to inspect the image on a computer while adjusting the mirror and camera arrangement.
A camera view of the numbers beside the barcode on a soft-drink can positioned about 20 feet away. I used the small printed details as a practical target while checking the image produced by the setup.
The soft-drink can used as the target for the roughly 20-foot imaging test. This photograph provides context for the magnified barcode view captured by the webcam.
An infrared sensor considered as an attachment to the optical setup. The idea was to estimate the temperature of the spot the instrument was aimed at from a distance. This would have provided a single-point reading; an image would have required an additional scanning system that I had not developed here.