Reflecting Telescope
Kenneth
A reflecting telescope (also called a reflector) is a telescope that uses a single or a combination of curved mirrors that reflect light and form an image. The reflecting telescope was invented in the 17th century by Isaac Newton as an alternative to the refracting telescope which, at that time, was a design that suffered from severe chromatic aberration. Although reflecting telescopes produce other types of optical aberrations, it is a design that allows for very large diameter objectives. Almost all of the major telescopes used in astronomy research are reflectors. Many variant forms are in use and some employ extra optical elements to improve image quality or place the image in a mechanically advantageous position. Since reflecting telescopes use mirrors, the design is sometimes referred to as a catoptric telescope.
Reflecting telescopes became extraordinarily popular for astronomy and many famous telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and popular amateur models use this design. In addition, the reflection telescope principle was applied to other electromagnetic wavelengths, and for example, X-ray telescopes also use the reflection principle to make image-forming optics.
Five years after Gregory designed his telescope and five years before Hooke built the first such Gregorian telescope, Isaac Newton in 1668 built his own reflecting telescope, which is generally acknowledged as the first reflecting telescope.[8] It used a spherically ground metal primary mirror and a small diagonal mirror in an optical configuration that has come to be known as the Newtonian telescope.
Despite the theoretical advantages of the reflector design, the difficulty of construction and the poor performance of the speculum metal mirrors being used at the time meant it took over 100 years for them to become popular. Many of the advances in reflecting telescopes included the perfection of parabolic mirror fabrication in the 18th century,[9] silver coated glass mirrors in the 19th century (built by Lon Foucault in 1858),[10] long-lasting aluminum coatings in the 20th century,[11] segmented mirrors to allow larger diameters, and active optics to compensate for gravitational deformation. A mid-20th century innovation was catadioptric telescopes such as the Schmidt camera, which use both a spherical mirror and a lens (called a corrector plate) as primary optical elements, mainly used for wide-field imaging without spherical aberration.
The late 20th century has seen the development of adaptive optics and lucky imaging to overcome the problems of seeing, and reflecting telescopes are ubiquitous on space telescopes and many types of spacecraft imaging devices.
A curved primary mirror is the reflector telescope's basic optical element that creates an image at the focal plane. The distance from the mirror to the focal plane is called the focal length. Film or a digital sensor may be located here to record the image, or a secondary mirror may be added to modify the optical characteristics and/or redirect the light to film, digital sensors, or an eyepiece for visual observation.
The primary mirror in most modern telescopes is composed of a solid glass cylinder whose front surface has been ground to a spherical or parabolic shape. A thin layer of aluminum is vacuum deposited onto the mirror, forming a highly reflective first surface mirror.
Some telescopes use primary mirrors which are made differently. Molten glass is rotated to make its surface paraboloidal, and is kept rotating while it cools and solidifies. (See Rotating furnace.) The resulting mirror shape approximates a desired paraboloid shape that requires minimal grinding and polishing to reach the exact figure needed.[12]
Reflecting telescopes, just like any other optical system, do not produce "perfect" images. The need to image objects at distances up to infinity, view them at different wavelengths of light, along with the requirement to have some way to view the image the primary mirror produces, means there is always some compromise in a reflecting telescope's optical design.
Because the primary mirror focuses light to a common point in front of its own reflecting surface almost all reflecting telescope designs have a secondary mirror, film holder, or detector near that focal point partially obstructing the light from reaching the primary mirror. Not only does this cause some reduction in the amount of light the system collects, it also causes a loss in contrast in the image due to diffraction effects of the obstruction as well as diffraction spikes caused by most secondary support structures.[13][14]
The use of mirrors avoids chromatic aberration but they produce other types of aberrations. A simple spherical mirror cannot bring light from a distant object to a common focus since the reflection of light rays striking the mirror near its edge do not converge with those that reflect from nearer the center of the mirror, a defect called spherical aberration. To avoid this problem most reflecting telescopes use parabolic shaped mirrors, a shape that can focus all the light to a common focus. Parabolic mirrors work well with objects near the center of the image they produce, (light traveling parallel to the mirror's optical axis), but towards the edge of that same field of view they suffer from off axis aberrations:[15][16]
The Gregorian telescope, described by Scottish astronomer and mathematician James Gregory in his 1663 book Optica Promota, employs a concave secondary mirror that reflects the image back through a hole in the primary mirror. This produces an upright image, useful for terrestrial observations. Some small spotting scopes are still built this way. There are several large modern telescopes that use a Gregorian configuration such as the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, the Magellan telescopes, the Large Binocular Telescope, and the Giant Magellan Telescope.
The Newtonian telescope was the first successful reflecting telescope, completed by Isaac Newton in 1668. It usually has a paraboloid primary mirror but at focal ratios of about f/10 or longer a spherical primary mirror can be sufficient for high visual resolution. A flat secondary mirror reflects the light to a focal plane at the side of the top of the telescope tube. It is one of the simplest and least expensive designs for a given size of primary, and is popular with amateur telescope makers as a home-build project.
The Cassegrain telescope (sometimes called the "Classic Cassegrain") was first published in a 1672 design attributed to Laurent Cassegrain. It has a parabolic primary mirror, and a hyperbolic secondary mirror that reflects the light back down through a hole in the primary. The folding and diverging effect of the secondary mirror creates a telescope with a long focal length while having a short tube length.
There are several designs that try to avoid obstructing the incoming light by eliminating the secondary or moving any secondary element off the primary mirror's optical axis, commonly called off-axis optical systems.
The Herschelian reflector is named after William Herschel, who used this design to build very large telescopes including the 40-foot telescope in 1789. In the Herschelian reflector the primary mirror is tilted so the observer's head does not block the incoming light. Although this introduces geometrical aberrations, Herschel employed this design to avoid the use of a Newtonian secondary mirror since the speculum metal mirrors of that time tarnished quickly and could only achieve 60% reflectivity.[19]
Stevick-Paul telescopes[20] are off-axis versions of Paul 3-mirror systems[21] with an added flat diagonal mirror. A convex secondary mirror is placed just to the side of the light entering the telescope, and positioned afocally so as to send parallel light on to the tertiary.The concave tertiary mirror is positioned exactly twice as far to the side of the entering beam as was the convex secondary, and its own radius of curvature distant from the secondary. Because the tertiary mirror receives parallel light from the secondary, it forms an image at its focus.The focal plane lies within the system of mirrors, but is accessible to the eye with the inclusion of a flat diagonal.The Stevick-Paul configuration results in all optical aberrations totaling zero to the third-order, except for the Petzval surface which is gently curved.
The Yolo was developed by Arthur S. Leonard in the mid-1960s.[22] Like the Schiefspiegler, it is an unobstructed, tilted reflector telescope. The original Yolo consists of a primary and secondary concave mirror, with the same curvature, and the same tilt to the main axis. Most Yolos use toroidal reflectors. The Yolo design eliminates coma, but leaves significant astigmatism, which is reduced by deformation of the secondary mirror by some form of warping harness, or alternatively, polishing a toroidal figure into the secondary.Like Schiefspieglers, many Yolo variations have been pursued. The needed amount of toroidal shape can be transferred entirely or partially to the primary mirror. In large focal ratios optical assemblies, both primary and secondary mirror can be left spherical and a spectacle correcting lens is added between the secondary mirror and the focal plane (catadioptric Yolo). The addition of a convex, long focus tertiary mirror leads to Leonard's Solano configuration. The Solano telescope doesn't contain any toric surfaces.
One design of telescope uses a rotating mirror consisting of a liquid metal in a tray that is spun at constant speed. As the tray spins, the liquid forms a paraboloidal surface of essentially unlimited size. This allows making very big telescope mirrors (over 6 metres), but they are limited to use by zenith telescopes.
In a prime focus design no secondary optics are used, the image is accessed at the focal point of the primary mirror. At the focal point is some type of structure for holding a film plate or electronic detector. In the past, in very large telescopes, an observer would sit inside the telescope in an "observing cage" to directly view the image or operate a camera.[23] Nowadays CCD cameras allow for remote operation of the telescope from almost anywhere in the world. The space available at prime focus is severely limited by the need to avoid obstructing the incoming light.[24]
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