Exploring the juncture of mathematics, optics, system engineering, radiometry, and physics

A skewray is a ray that has non-zero angular momentum about the symmetry axis of an optical system. In English, that means that the ray won’t intersect the line down the middle of the lens. Rather than remaining embedded in a plane, a skewray corkscrews through the system along a spiral. Since light follows the path that takes the shortest time and most rays into an optical system are off axis in this way, the shortest path for most light through an optical system is, in fact, a helix.

• Proposals (mainly NASA)
• Concept development
• Requirements (sampling, resolution, precision, accuracy, sensitivity, &c)
• Budgets (resolution/MTF, noise/SNR, mass, power, &c)
• Radiometry & photometry models
• Statistics
• Parametric modeling
• Non-imaging optical design (calibration and illumination subsystems)