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The ability of a lens to resolve detail is usually determined by the quality of the lens, but is ultimately limited by diffraction.Light coming from a point source in the object diffracts through the lens aperture such that it forms a diffraction pattern in the image, which has a central spot and surrounding bright rings, separated by dark nulls; this pattern is known as an Airy pattern, and ...
A 1951 USAF resolution test chart is a microscopic optical resolution test device originally defined by the U.S. Air Force MIL-STD-150A standard of 1951. The design provides numerous small target shapes exhibiting a stepped assortment of precise spatial frequency specimens.
Resolving power is the ability of an imaging device to separate (i.e., to see as distinct) points of an object that are located at a small angular distance or it is the power of an optical instrument to separate far away objects, that are close together, into individual images. The term resolution or minimum resolvable distance is the minimum ...
For example, an electron at an energy of 10 keV has a wavelength of 0.01 nm, allowing the electron microscope (SEM or TEM) to achieve high resolution images. Other massive particles such as helium, neon, and gallium ions have been used to produce images at resolutions beyond what can be attained with visible light.
With no modification to the microscope, i.e. with a simple wide field light microscope, the quality of optical sectioning is governed by the same physics as the depth of field effect in photography. For a high numerical aperture lens, equivalent to a wide aperture, the depth of field is small (shallow focus) and gives good optical sectioning.
Optical magnification is the ratio between the apparent size of an object (or its size in an image) and its true size, and thus it is a dimensionless number. Optical magnification is sometimes referred to as "power" (for example "10× power"), although this can lead to confusion with optical power.
The optical microscope, also referred to as a light microscope, is a type of microscope that commonly uses visible light and a system of lenses to generate magnified images of small objects. Optical microscopes are the oldest design of microscope and were possibly invented in their present compound form in the 17th century.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723). The field of microscopy (optical microscopy) dates back to at least the 17th-century.Earlier microscopes, single lens magnifying glasses with limited magnification, date at least as far back as the wide spread use of lenses in eyeglasses in the 13th century [2] but more advanced compound microscopes first appeared in Europe around 1620 [3] [4] The ...