---
title: "Beam Pointing Stability calculator — AperiOptic"
description: "Lateral beam wander from angular drift over a propagation distance. Free online optics calculator, with the formula and code snippets."
url: "https://aperioptic.com/calculators/beam-pointing-stability"
---

# Beam Pointing Stability calculator

Lateral beam wander from angular drift over a propagation distance.

Category: [Optomechanics](https://aperioptic.com/calculators)

Formula: `Δx = θ · L`

## Inputs

| Input | Parameter | Unit | Default |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Pointing drift | `th` | deg | 0.001 |
| Distance | `L` | m | 1 |

## Result with the default inputs

- Lateral shift: 17.4533 µm
- Drift: 17.4533 µrad

Open it with your own values: put each input in the address as a parameter, for example [`/calculators/beam-pointing-stability?th=0.001`](https://aperioptic.com/calculators/beam-pointing-stability?th=0.001). A unit other than the listed one goes in `<parameter>_unit`.

Read more: [Wikipedia: Beam steering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_steering)

[All optics calculators](https://aperioptic.com/calculators)

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The interactive page: https://aperioptic.com/calculators/beam-pointing-stability (AperiOptic runs in the browser; free, no account). Every page of the site as Markdown: https://aperioptic.com/llms.txt