QC 351 A7 no. 09 / Meinel and Shack recently devised a three-element reflective optical
system for a specific astronomical application that appears to offer rather
general uses for fast, wide-field cameras. A three-element system is
mathematically elegant in that this is the minimum number of surfaces necessary to provide zero third-order spherical aberration, coma, and astigmatism
for any distribution of spacings and powers.. Two-element configurations of
surfaces, such as the Schwarzschild and Couder, in general, leave one of
the above aberrations uncorrected. The maximum speed and field of good
definition of two- mirror designs are also quite limited.
The Meinel-Shack three-mirror system provides much superior performance since the degrees of freedom afforded through the use of aspheric
deformations on all surfaces permits the exact solution for the fifth -order
aberrations astigmatism 5, coma 5 and spherical 5 to be eliminated along
with astigmatism 3, coma 3 and spherical 3. Moreover, it is possible to
design practical systems with zero Petzval sum yielding a flat focal surface,
and achieve an excellent balance of the remaining fifth -order aberrations,
elliptical coma and oblique spherical aberration. The ultimate optical
performance is governed by the resulting balance of any remaining higher -
order aberrations.
A preliminary report of the design approach used by Meinel and Shack
is given in Optical Sciences Technical Report No. 6, appended to this report.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/621603 |
| Date | 04 1900 |
| Creators | Meinel, Aden B., Shack, Roland V. |
| Publisher | Optical Sciences Center, University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona) |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Technical Report |
| Rights | Copyright © Arizona Board of Regents |
| Relation | Optical Sciences Technical Report 09 |
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