Colleagues:

We have a terrific program set up for SPIE’s Optics and Photonics Symposium in San Diego on August 25th through 29th, 2013.  We have a two-day conference, “Optomechanical Engineering 2013,” on Wednesday and Thursday (the 28th and 29th) with a poster session on Monday evening, a meeting of the Optomechanical/Instrument Technical Group on Tuesday evening, the 27th, and the greatest exhibit of the optics industry to be in Southern California all year on the 27th, 28th and 29th.

Our Tuesday night meeting will feature Phil Pressel’s presentation of some of the challenges he faced in designing the “Hexagon” space surveillance camera for the CIA.  The project was officially declassified in 2011 and Phil is publishing a book on his experiences on the project.  It may be available at the meeting and you might be able to get him to autograph it for you.

I’ll be teaching my day-long tutorial, “Optomechanics and the Tolerancing of Instruments,” on Monday the 26th.  This is the course in which I teach engineers the full theory behind the Optomechanical Constraint Equations that control the position, orientation and size of the image in an optical system.  I personally use the equations to tolerance the optical metering structure, size alignment mechanisms, evaluate thermal boresight shifts and analyze image jitter in dynamic environments.  I show my students how to do the same things.

Wednesday night is the Awards Banquet at which new Fellows will be inducted by the society.  That’s a grand event as well.

Also on Wednesday, the 28th, I’ll be presenting a paper in our conference and on Thursday I’ll be presenting a paper in Mark Kahan’s conference, “Optical Modeling and Performance Prediction VI.”

It’s a week-long hubbub of exciting events, networking and learning.  I hope to see you all there.

Al H.
7-31-13