Re: SCT Primary Mirror and Wavefront Aberrations

From: Chris1011 (chris1011_at_aol.com)
Date: 07/09/04 

Date: 09 Jul 2004 14:32:51 GMT

>> Say the primary also
has a certain amount of peaks and valleys with a certain RMS or P-V value .
How does the scope overall aberrations change , in a quantitative way , that
was the sense of my question .>>

It is really quite simple. Any surface error on the primary mirror will
translate exactly to twice the wavefront error at the eyepiece. The same is
true of the secondary mirror. For the corrector plate, any surface error
translates to approximately 1/2 the wavefront error at the eyepieces. No need
for fancy equations.

By the way, Astro-Physics sells ATMOS, a truly superb optics design program
that is very simple to use and is quite powerful. It was developed by an
Italian amateur for amateur use. Better than Oslo in that regard.

Roland Christen

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