About Course
Course Description: Optical systems, Gaussian optics, aberrations, radiometry, sources, detectors, optical engineering.
Course Number: OPTI 502L
Course Type: Graduate Course
Units: 1
Semester Offered: Fall
Days and Times: Lecture session (Friday 2:00 - 2:50 pm); lab sessions (various dates and times, usually ~3 hours per session on Mon and Tue.)
Lecture Room: Meinel 422
Lab: Meinel 436
Distance Course: No
Wyant College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona
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It is now time to think about the Final Project with your lab-group members. We will let your group can meet and discuss your final project during the lecture time on 10/17 in the classroom. There will be no lecture, so your team can fully focus on the planning and discussions under Heejoo's guidance. Then, for your lab session time on 10/20 or 10/21, you can discuss with Lam (TA) for the specific plans and optical components availability for your final project experiments. Use the time wisely as the final project takes time and careful planning. Plan some exciting experiments/investigations and enjoy the beauty of science!
We are going to do a mid-check for your labnotes. Please, submit your lab note to Lam (TA) after your lab session on 10/13 or 10/14. Heejoo and Lam will review and give it back to you during the lab sessions on 10/27 or 10/28. Thank you.
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It is great to see you all in the OPTI502L class this fall semester 2025! It will be a wonderful class with lots of exciting optical engineering and science experiments and hands-on labs! Welcome to the class!
There will be no lab sessions on 8/25 and 8/26 because the first lecture session is schedule on Fri. The class will begin by Heejoo Choi with the introduction to the class session at 2 pm on 8/29. Daewook and Heejoo are looking forward to meeting you all. Thank you.
I hope your semester begins well with exciting classes and awesome colleagues on campus. Daewook will teach the Lab-1 this Friday (9/5) to open up the actual lab sessions for the semester.
The TA Lam Nguyen's email address is ltn99@arizona.edu . Please, feel free to contact him whenever you need a topic to discuss. Thank you.
We will learn about relay lens and field lens today (9/26) in classroom. Heejoo and Daewook will also bring two nice demo classic cameras to the classroom! It will be a nice class. See you all soon. ;-)
Grading Policy
The grade for this course is based on your lab notebook (75%), which requires lab and lecture session attendance, and a final group presentation (25%). The notebooks will be graded on the basis of completeness of the lab write-up and answering the questions. Lab notebooks will be collected during the semester and graded. Also, we will always be happy to look at your notebooks throughout the term.
About Instructor
Daewook Kim is an associate professor of Optical Sciences and Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has been working in the optical engineering field for more than 10 years, mainly focusing on very large astronomical optics such as the 25 m in diameter Giant Magellan Telescope primary mirrors. His main research area covers the precision freeform optics fabrication and various metrology topics such as interferometric test systems using computer generated holograms, direct curvature measurements, and dynamic deflectometry systems. He is currently a chair/co-chair of the Optical Manufacturing and Testing conference (SPIE) and the Optical Fabrication and Testing conference (OSA). He is a Senior member of OSA and SPIE and has been serving as an associate editor for the journal Optics Express.
Heejoo Choi is an assistant research professor of Optical Sciences and will co-teach Daewook and TA for the lab setups. He is an expert in optical design, metrology and engineering area and worked on various large ground and space telescope and imaging systems.
Peng Su, Ping Zhou and James Burge are also helping for planning and teaching the 502L class.
Class Simulator Links
Telescope aberration simulator: https://webs.optics.arizona.edu/gsmith/Hubble.html (by Prof. Greg Smith)
Contacts
Daewook Kim: dkim@optics.arizona.edu
Heejoo Choi: heejoochoi@arizona.edu
TA: Lam Nguyen: ltn99@arizona.edu