[ATM] A bit of optical theory - two mirror "true aplanats"

[Michael Peck <mpeck1@ix.netcom.com>]

This is mostly of theoretical interest to ATMs, but if any of you have ever 
wondered what Jim Burrows is talking about when he refers to "true 
aplanats" a paper that showed up on the arxiv.org preprint server yesterday 
gives a pretty good explanation. Here's a link to the pdf version: 
<http://www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0502/0502121.pdf>. It's a 
little more accessible than Born & Wolf or the original work by 
Schwarzschild (at least if your German is as rusty as mine).

One thing that surprised me, and might surprise Jim too, is there's a 
closed form expression for the surface shapes of the mirrors.

Mike Peck


------
Michael Peck
mpeck1@ix.netcom.com

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