Recent upgrades to the turbomachinery facility at JHU enable measurements of performance, as well as flow structure, turbulence and cavitation within a water-jet pump. The rotor, stator and pump casing in this optically index-matched facility are made of acrylic that has the same optical index of refraction as the working fluid, a concentrated solution of NaI in water. The essentially “invisible” blades allow unobstructed view and access to optical flow measurement techniques. Initial tests in water focus on observations on occurrence of cavitation in the vicinity of the narrow tip-gap. For the present design and operating conditions, near the leading edge, cavitation in the tip corner of the pressure side causes accumulation of bubbles along the pressure side that extends to mid blade. As rollup of a tip vortex starts, these bubbles cross the tip gap to the suction side, and become primary nuclei for cavitation inception within the tip leakage vortex (TLV). Bursting of this tip vortex as it migrates towards the pressure side of the neighboring blade generates a cloud of bubbles along the aft section of the passage. As the flow in the tip gap increases upstream of the trailing edge, cavitation also develops within the gap, along the pressure side corner.