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UltravioletPhotography

Time lapse of melting ice cube in SWIR [VIDEOS NOW MISSING?]


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After a great deal of work, I have figured out how to access the video feed from my TriWave in MATLAB, and I've written a program to capture time lapses and process the resulting frames. Each frame of video is actually 120 frames from the camera (4 seconds' worth) averaged together, and this is repeated once a minute. This video took 90 minutes in real life, but's 13 seconds of video, or about 415 times faster than reality.

 

Lens: Wollensak Velostigmat 25mm/1.4

Filter: Thorlabs FB1450-12 (1450nm, 12nm FWHM)

 

https://youtube.com/dEgNbJj6NWU

 

YouTube's compression really degrades it. :wacko:

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Update: I repeated the experiment at 1250nm. For some reason the Triwave is significantly less sensitive at 1250nm. (Or my lens has lower transmission that at 1450nm? Unlikely.) I don't THINK it's the filter, since the peak transmission is 50%-ish for the 1250nm but 30%-ish for the 1450nm, and the bandwidth is almost the same. ANYway, excuse my noise.

Filter: Thorlabs FB1250-10.

 

https://youtube.com/Br3hr_6Z7Tc

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Only took you ten days to post your black valentine's day heart. But you need to stop the video a couple seconds earlier. It just goes to mush at the end.

 

Looks like you can have some fun with this. What happens with a piece of paper, should see it darken up, but if you use color paper, I wonder if the dyes would interfere with the water dark signal.

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Very interesting, there is clearly a difference. The ice looks darker than the water at 1250 nm, I should check the curves but maybe it is just because it is thicker.

 

Found the graph: https://www.ultravioletphotography.com/content/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=17341

 

Water peaks just after 1200 nm, ice peaks a bit further and absorbs a bit more than water at 1250 nm. I don't know if this little difference can be seen in the video, thickness probably plays a bigger role.

 

Also, why do you have more noise at 1250 nm than at 1450 nm? I guess you used a halogen bulb as a SWIR source. Also, the camera's sensitivity at both wavelengths is similar: https://www.ultravioletphotography.com/content/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=15251

 

Maybe the 1250 nm filter is tighter?

 

Oh, nevermind, I just noticed you already wrote about this.

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You may not have a cold plate, but if you did then you could really do some creative mixed icing and water layers looking at these wavelengths.

I know they aren't common, we had one in our lab and many people had never seen one before. But its fun to rapidly heat or cool something.

 

These are great. I wonder how dyes and salts or sugars would effect it.

 

You can have ice and sprinkle some salt on the top to get cold water.

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I wish I had a way to measure the sensitivity of the TriWave at different wavelengths because I’m starting to think that curve shown in the link you put (Stefano) is not necessary accurate for my device. 1250nm definitely seems substantially less sensitive than 1450nm, and the filter transmission is the opposite pattern so it is not the filters. (I trust ThorLabs’ spectra.) The light should be stronger at 1250nm also, with halogen.

 

I also have a 1200nm filter and the signal is much stronger at 1200nm.

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For looking at sugar dissolving in water, I think my first choice would be crossed polarizers in visible light, actually. I may try that also...
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I wish I had a way to measure the sensitivity of the TriWave at different wavelengths because I’m starting to think that curve shown in the link you put (Stefano) is not necessary accurate for my device. 1250nm definitely seems substantially less sensitive than 1450nm, and the filter transmission is the opposite pattern so it is not the filters. (I trust ThorLabs’ spectra.) The light should be stronger at 1250nm also, with halogen.

 

I also have a 1200nm filter and the signal is much stronger at 1200nm.

If you have a diffraction grating with less than 1000 lines/mm you may try seeing a halogen bulb with it. It will not be accurate, but you should see something.

 

Since your camera was not a finished product, but something still under development, it is possible that the curve they provided was not accurate. If you can not trust it, and if you are a bit lucky, maybe your camera can go a bit beyond 1600 nm.

 

Something truly crazy to try would be to use upconversion phosphors on it to see MWIR. But I can hardly imagine a molecule capable of reacting to a ~0.5 eV photon. I am already impressed IR film is a thing.

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Stefano, I don’t see the point of a diffraction grating without a scale to figure out wavelength. Also it’s a monochrome camera
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You may see the "bands" since the sensitivity should be bumpy according to the (not so trustable) graph. About the wavelengths, you may use the Fraunhofer lines or a remote control as a rough reference (actually, the Fraunhofer lines are precise). But honestly, I don't know if it is a good idea.
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I did image the Fraunhofer lines before, in UV, visible and IR. I even saw the calcium doublet (about 393.4 and 396.8 nm) with the naked eye (not really something to try, but I was curious). Once you figure out how "stretched" they are (they are not linear) you have a valid reference. But then your light source will not be a valid reference. Although halogen bulbs are blackbody radiators, their spectrum doesn't match exactly to that of a true blackbody. If you want something indicative only, you may try this.

 

The Sun must be narrowed down with a slit in order to achieve sufficient resolution to see the lines well.

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You may see the "bands" since the sensitivity should be bumpy according to the (not so trustable) graph. About the wavelengths, you may use the Fraunhofer lines or a remote control as a rough reference (actually, the Fraunhofer lines are precise). But honestly, I don't know if it is a good idea.

The Fraunhofer lines are blotted out at the points 1450nm and 1250nm. Lots of water vapor in the atmosphere.

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I would first try a different lens than jumping to think the triwave has an unusual sensitivity curve.

Coatings on lenses can have rapid dips.

 

See if this loss of signal occurs for each of lenses first. I thought you had a good SWIR lens from thorlabs? That shouldn't have a coating issue if there is something on the Wollensak.

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