ATM A bit of glass for a strange camera

[Aplanatic@aol.com]

Dear List,

A friend and I have come up with an interesting small telescope for wide-field imaging with a CCD camera.  It's a modified flat-field Schmidt Cass that will be used with an FLI 6303 CCD camera.  We'd like to finish it before RTMC this year, so I'm in a hurry to get some glass.  I need a primary blank 4" diameter between 0.6 and 0.8" thick, and a piece of BK7, 50 mm in diameter, and thickness between 0.35" and 0.55".  I'll be figuring the secondary through-the-back, thus the need for optical glass.

If you have anything laying around that meets these requirements let me know.  I'm willing to pay for the material and your trouble.

If you're interested, the tiny flat-field Schmidt Cass (TFFSC) has a focal length of 220 mm and is f/4 after the large central obstruction has been accounted for.  It covers, with essentially perfect images, the entire 2K X 3K array of 9 micron pixels (18 X 27 mm) and has about 25% vignetting in the corners of the array.  It will use a thin plate glass corrector made by the vac pan deformation technique.

Thanks,
Dave Rowe