I learned in October 2022’s Breakthrough that the spikes of stars in high-power photos are called diffraction spikes. Why do they appear as two crosses at 45 degrees to each other? The diffraction ...

One of the simplest and most beautiful naturally occurring patterns can be observed when light is shined through a pair of slightly misaligned periodic structures. This phenomenon, known as the moiré ...

A team of NASA researchers is developing new types of optical masks that could help enable the many orders of magnitude of starlight suppression needed for future space observatories to pick out very ...

What is the Diffraction Limit? The diffraction limit is a fundamental barrier in optical microscopy that sets the minimum size of features that can be resolved using conventional light microscopes. It ...