Detectors & Imaging

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Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast
This episode of Following the Photons: A Photonics Podcast features our Light News photonics news roundup for July 7, 2026.
July 7, 2026
Credit: F. Kamphues, ESO/M. Kornmesse
Satellites crossing the night sky above the northern Atacama Desert in Chile during an hour. It’s a stack of a time-lapse video taken on October 15, 2025, about two hours after sunset. Some streaks are caused by planes, easily identified by blinking-colored lights, but most trails are from satellites. In the foreground is the dome of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, the world’s largest optical/infrared telescope, currently under construction atop Cerro Armazones. Behind it are the lasers of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory, 22 km away.
July 7, 2026
Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA
Rubin’s 1.7-gigapixel image of a field of stars within the constellation Lupus gives us an unprecedented view of the Universe. Faint, glowing clouds spread across this image are galactic cirrus—clouds of interstellar gas and dust found in the foreground of the Milky Way.
June 30, 2026
Working principle of the Fourier-optics-based angle-resolved imaging spectrometer.
June 25, 2026
Credit: Cirrus Logic
Bringing signal conversion closer to the sensor unlocks new performance gains.
June 25, 2026
Yu-Jie Lin (left) holds the metalens the group developed, and Professor Zhiwen Liu is on his right.
June 17, 2026
Credit: Wolf/TU Graz
Birgitta Bernhardt in the lab with the retroreflector counterpart to her mobile UV dual-comb spectrometer.
June 11, 2026
Credit: WhaleSpotter
The AI-aided detection system captures clear images of humpback whales even in challenging conditions.
June 10, 2026
Credit: Phlux Technology
FIGURE 1. Time-of-flight physics.
May 28, 2026

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