Some very poor images unfortunately as it was windy, but I wanted to see what to expect & particularly how the 4x microscope objective preforms in UVA, which I am pleased with.

Collimating lens

A microscope has a light source, a diaphragm (controls the shape and amount of light like a lens aperture), a condenser (a lens that focuses that light on to the subject at the peak focus point for your objective), then a sample holding stage and your objective.

Most finite Nikon Plan microscope lenses have most of their optical correction already in the objectives, making them more suited to be used as camera objectives.

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Collimated beam of lightmeaning

Good lasers have Gaussian beams. Gaussian beams are never perfectly collimated, but larger diameter beams have a small beam divergence. To get a larger diameter beam, use a beam expander.

Just play with it and enjoy it. You first ruler shot is a great start. Just focus on learning how to focus it and give it more light than you think.

How to collimate a divergingbeam of light

Going the photomacrographic way, the Laowa 25mm f/2.8 provides 2.5-5X magnification with very good image quality. The Mitakon 20mm f/28 is much cheaper but only gives 4-4.5X.

Before collimating, the beam will have diverged a bit to a radius of 5cm, the range of the wavelengths is 1400-1600nm and I don't want to lose more than 30% of initial power.

Collimated lightvs polarized

For wavelength division multiplexing your 100 different wavelengths could each be produced by an individual laser. They could then be sent through a single mode optical fiber and then your could collect the light coming out of the optical fiber. That ligh does each wavelength will be fairly nice almost Gaussian spot that will diverge. You could put a collimating lens where the spot is 5 mm and get a collimated beam. It would act pretty much like a Gaussian beam.

Collimation definition in radiography

There are some details, each wavelength will travel at a slightly different speed through the fiber due to waveguide dispersion and material dispersion.

Collimatedflashlight

A great Nikon or Leitz or Zeiss objective will cost hundreds to thousands just for the objective. But my microscope science career is mostly over and its time for fun.

This covers 8mm x 6mm on a full frame camera & is a very simple set-up with a 160mm x M42 tube length & the camera on a focusing rail.

Forth & last, sorry for the poor image but the wind did it. At least it proves the 4x microscope objective is UVA capable, as the camera is.

Collimatedmeaning in Physics

I'll probably be doing mostly reflected light, but it is nice to know what is needed for light transmitted through the specimen.

I'm asking in general how to collimate it, but my idea was use a parabolic mirror, then focus all wavelengths into a very short optical fiber, then get the light back into vacuum. Would this work? Is there a better way?

A finite focus microscope objective relies upon the secondary optical system, the ocular, to give flat field correction.

Field curvature is normally not that important either for our rather 3-dimensional motifs that need photo-stacking anyway.

But in the big picture, if you start out with a nice beam, you can usually use a lens or a set of lenses to collimate the beam, and each wavelength can be treated as a slightly different problem.

Collimated beammeaning

Each wavelength will have a little bit of chromatic dispersion due to the lens, unless you choose to use a special lens.

The condenser is what I was referring to badly. You can optimized the light so that it focus in the peak plane for your specific objective and broaden after that point to just fill the exact diameter of your specific objective front glass opening. That would be highly customized to your objective lens and give you the best images.

If instead you have incoherent light, rather than having nice electromagnetic modes to propagate, it is a little different. For example you wouldn’t get much light into the single mode optical fiber. But you could do something like put two apertures separated by a distance and have a roughly collimated light. The diffraction angle will depend slightly on the wavelength, but could still put a lens or set of lenses to expand or focus the light or to collimate the light. Same as before the chromatic aberration of the lenses and type of lenses can matter some, but big picture it would work.