ATM Lensless Schmidt Camera/telescope

[Asaf Shtull-Trauring <astropal@yahoo.com>]

Dear all,

About a year ago I got a bunch of old Astronomy magazines from an
Amateur Astronomer (it's just GREAT to have Amateur astronomers around
;-D ), and I oftenly look at them from new articles.

This leads us to last Saturday. That day I was really looking forward
to know if I got in to the next level of the Astrophysics Olympiad.
Whatever. So I was reading a lot of old magazines, and I came up about
some ATM articles and stuff, about Steffaline, And Riverside cons and
stuff.

Now, you're probably thinking: "why am I reading this e-mail? Get to
the point ASAF!". Well, here comes the punch line: I was looking at an
Astronomy magazine from 1993, and I was reading an article about a
Lensless Schmidt Camera/telescope. It was really cool.
The idea of the camera/telescope is the following. You take a
shperical 8" f/3 mirror, make the tube very long (55"), make a small
round ring that blocks out some of the light from coming in, which
takes down the effective aperture of the mirror to 5" f/4.8. Then you
put a diagonal 1.5", and conncent a camera obscura. Didn't understand?
Don't ask me, but the wise-guys. The idea of the long tube, and the
ring light-blocker is to fix the problems of a spherical mirror (coma,
antigsman or something like that). 

Well, anyone built a telescope/camera like this? any ideas? websites?
Anyone got an 8" f/3 mirror in his home who wants to sell it to me?

Thanks, Asaf.
==
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Asaf Shtull-Trauring, Amateur Astronomer



http://www.maxnm.com/asaf/
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