An off-axis, wide-field, diffraction-limited, reflective Schmidt Telescope

Will Saunders

doi:10.1117/12.856351

6 August 2010 An off-axis, wide-field, diffraction-limited, reflective Schmidt Telescope

Will Saunders

Proceedings Volume 7733, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes III; 77333C (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.856351
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Off-axis telescopes with unobstructed pupils offer great advantages in terms of emissivity, throughput, and diffractionlimited energy concentration. For most telescope designs, implementation of an off-axis configuration imposes enormous penalties in terms of cost, optical difficulty and performance, and for this reason off-axis telescopes are rarely constructed. However, for the reflective Schmidt design, implementation of an off-axis configuration is very straightforward, and involves only a modest optical penalty. Moreover, the reflective Schmidt gets particular benefits, avoiding the obstruction of its large focal plane and support column, and gaining a highly accessible, gravity-invariant prime focus, capable of accommodating very large instrumentation. We present an off-axis f/8 reflective Schmidt design for the proposed 'KDUST' Chinese infrared telescope at Dome A on the Antarctic plateau, which offers simultaneous diffraction-limited NIR imaging over 1°, and close to diffraction-limited imaging out to 2° for fibre-fed NIR spectroscopy.

Citation Download Citation

Will Saunders "An off-axis, wide-field, diffraction-limited, reflective Schmidt Telescope", Proc. SPIE 7733, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes III, 77333C (6 August 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.856351

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