A magnifying glass is seen behind a small tea candle. The magnifying image is projecting the shadow of a column of heated air.

Finding Simpler Schlieren Imaging Systems

October 6, 2025 by Aaron Beckendorf 3 Comments

Perhaps the most surprising thing about shadowgraphs is how simple they are: you simply take a point source of light, pass the light through a the volume of air to be imaged, and record the pattern projected on a screen; as light passes through the transition between areas with different refractive indices, it gets bent in a different direction, creating shadows on the viewing screen. [Degree of Freedom] started with these simple shadowgraphs, moved on to the more advanced schlieren photography, and eventually came up with a technique sensitive enough to register the body heat from his hand.

The most basic component in a shadowgraph is a point light source, such as the sun, which in experiments was enough to project the image of an escaping stream of butane onto a sheet of white paper. Better point sources make the imaging work over a wider range of distances from the source and projection screen, and a magnifying lens makes the image brighter and sharper, but smaller. To move from shadowgraphy to schlieren imaging, [Degree of Freedom] positioned a razor blade in the focal plane of the magnifying lens, so that it cut off light refracted by air disturbances, making their shadows darker. Interestingly, if the light source is small and point-like enough, adding the razor blade makes almost no difference in contrast.

With this basic setup under his belt, [Degree of Freedom] moved on to more unique schlieren setups. One of these replaced the magnifying lens with a standard camera lens in which the aperture diaphragm replaced the razor blade, and another replaced the light source and razor with a high-contrast black-and-white pattern on a screen. The most sensitive technique was what he called double-pinhole schlieren photography, which used a pinhole for the light source and another pinhole in place of the razor blade. This could image the heated air rising from his hand, even at room temperature.

The high-contrast background imaging system is reminiscent of this technique, which uses a camera and a known background to compute schlieren images. If you’re interested in a more detailed look, we’ve covered schlieren photography in depth before.

Thanks to [kooshi] for the tip!

Flow Visualization With Schlieren Photography

May 8, 2025 by Tyler August 9 Comments

The word “Schlieren” is German, and translates roughly to “streaks”. What is streaky photography, and why might you want to use it in a project? And where did this funny term come from?

Think of the heat shimmer you can see on a hot day. From the ideal gas law, we know that hot air is less dense than cold air. Because of that density difference, it has a slightly lower refractive index. A light ray passing through a density gradient faces a gradient of refractive index, so is bent, hence the shimmer. Continue reading “Flow Visualization With Schlieren Photography” →

Budget Schlieren Imaging Setup Uses 3D Printing To Reveal The Unseen

April 17, 2025 by Tyler August 9 Comments

We’re suckers here for projects that let you see the unseeable, and [Ayden Wardell Aerospace] provides that on a budget with their $30 Schlieren Imaging Setup. The unseeable in question is differences in air density– or, more precisely, differences in the refractive index of the fluid the imaging set up makes use of, in this case air. Think of how you can see waves of “heat” on a warm day– that’s lower-density hot air refracting light as it rises. Schlieren photography takes advantage of this, allowing to analyze fluid flows– for example, the mach cones in a DIY rocket nozzle, which is what got [Ayden Wardell Aerospace] interested in the technique.

Shock diamonds from a homemade rocket nozzle imaged by this setup. — Examining exhaust makes this a useful tool for [Aerospace].

This is a ‘classic’ mirror-and-lamp Schlieren set up. You put the system you wish to film near the focal plane of a spherical mirror, and camera and light source out at twice the focal distance. Rays deflected by changes in refractive index miss the camera– usually one places a razor blade precisely to block them, but [Ayden] found that when using a smart phone that was unnecessary, which shocked this author.

While it is possible that [Ayden Wardell Aerospace] has technically constructed a shadowgraph, they claim that carefully positioning the smartphone allows the sharp edge of the case to replace the razor blade. A shadowgraph, which shows the second derivative of density, is a perfectly valid technique for flow visualization, and is superior to Schlieren photography in some circumstances– when looking at shock waves, for example.

Regardless, the great thing about this project is that [Ayden Wardell Aerospace] provides us with STLs for the mirror and smartphone mounting, as well as providing a BOM and a clear instructional video. Rather than arguing in the comments if this is “truly” Schlieren imaging, grab a mirror, extrude some filament, and test it for yourself!

There are many ways to do Schlieren images. We’ve highighted background-oriented techniques, and seen how to do it with a moiré pattern, or even a selfie stick. Still, this is the first time 3D printing has gotten involved and the build video below is quick and worth watching for those sweet, sweet Schlieren images. Continue reading “Budget Schlieren Imaging Setup Uses 3D Printing To Reveal The Unseen” →

Canned Air Is Unexpectedly Supersonic

February 18, 2024 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

How fast is the gas coming out from those little duster tubes of canned air? Perhaps faster than one might think! It’s supersonic (video, embedded below) as [Cylo’s Garage] shows by imaging clear shock diamonds in the flow from those thin little tubes.

Shock diamonds are a clear indicator of supersonic flow.

Shock diamonds, normally seen in things like afterburning jet turbine or rocket engine exhaust streams, are the product of standing wave patterns that indicate supersonic speeds. These are more easily visible in jet plumes, but [Cylo’s Garage] managed to get some great images of the same phenomenon in more everyday things such as the flow of duster gas.

Imaging this is made possible thanks to what looks like a simple but effective Sch lieren imaging setup, which is a method of visualizing normally imperceptible changes in a fluid’s refractive index. Since the refractive index of a gas can change in response to density, pressure, or temperature, it’s a perfect way to see what’s going on when there’s otherwise nothing for one’s eyeballs to latch onto.

Intrigued by this kind of imaging? It requires a careful setup, but nothing particularly complicated or hard to get a hold of. Here’s one such setup, here’s a Schlieren videography project, and here’s a particularly intriguing approach that leverages modern electronics like a smartphone.

Thanks to [Quinor] for the tip!

Continue reading “Canned Air Is Unexpectedly Supersonic” →

On the left side, there's a smartphone. On the right side, there's a hairdryer turned on. On the smartphone screen, you can see the working end of the hairdryer shown, as well as a jet of air coming out of that end. In the background, there's an LCD screen showing a noise pattern.

Observe Airflow Using Smartphone And Background-Oriented Schlieren

July 17, 2022 by Arya Voronova 22 Comments

Multiple people have recently shared this exciting demonstration (nitter) with us – visualizing airflow using a smartphone, called ‘background-oriented schlieren’. On a hot summer day, you might see waves in the air – caused by air changing density as it warms up, and therefore refracting the light differently. Schlieren photography is an general set of techniques for visualizing fluid flow, but of course, it can also be applied to airflow. In this case, using some clever optical recognition tricks, this schlieren method lets you visualize flow of air using only your Android smartphone’s high resolution camera and a known-pattern printed background! Continue reading “Observe Airflow Using Smartphone And Background-Oriented Schlieren” →

Helicopter Is Full Of Compressed Air

April 27, 2021 by Al Williams 14 Comments

[Tom] likes to build little helicopters and decided to build one that runs on compressed air. (Video, embedded below.) Turns out it was a little harder than he thought. Originally, he was trying for a compressed air quadcopter. He’d already worked with an air turbine, but putting on a vehicle that can lift itself into the air turns out to have a lot of hidden gotchas.

[Tom] went through a lot of design considerations to arrive at the helicopter design. He considered counter-rotating props, but there were a host of problems involved. He finally settled on a single prob with a tail rotor that resides on the far end of a long boom to allow the resulting lever arm to reduce the work required of the tail rotor.

Continue reading “Helicopter Is Full Of Compressed Air” →

Schlieren On A Stick

August 25, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 10 Comments

Schlieren imaging is a technique for viewing the density of transparent fluids using a camera and some clever optical setups. Density of a fluid like air might change based on the composition of the air itself with various gasses, or it may vary as a result of a sound or pressure wave. It might sound like you would need a complicated and/or expensive setup in order to view such things, but with a few common things you can have your own Schlieren setup as [elad] demonstrates.

His setup relies on a cell phone, attached to a selfie stick, with a spherical mirror at the other end. The selfie stick makes adjusting the distance from the camera to the mirror easy, as a specific distance from the camera is required as a function of focal length. For cell phone cameras, it’s best to find this distance through experimentation using a small LED as the point source. Once it’s calibrated and working, a circular field of view is displayed on the phone which allows the viewer to see any change in density in front of the mirror.

The only downside of this build that [elad] notes is that the selfie stick isn’t stiff enough to prevent the image from shaking around a little bit, but all things considered this is an excellent project that shows a neat and useful trick in the photography/instrumentation world that could be useful for a lot of other projects. We’ve only seen Schlieren imaging once before and it used a slightly different method of viewing the changing densities.

Continue reading “Schlieren On A Stick” →