[ATM] Ants of the World -- Unite!

["Richard F.L.R. Snashall" <rflrs@rcn.com>]

I read somewhere that the new HDTV chips are about 2/3 inch
across... suppose 16.5 mm covers the active region.

A two mirror system with a field flattener to utilize this
chip might be (400 mm f/10):

    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11f.atm
    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11f.len
    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11f.txt
    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11f.zmx

The chip could be mounted on the primary (allowing about 1 cm
for all the attachment stuff).  For the infinite object distance,
this system has some uncorrected coma -- but is still diffraction
limited over the full chip.

Suppose, though, you use the telescope to look at an closer object,
one at 20 m.  I propose you might use two methods simultaneously to
achieve the focus change: moving the secondary further from the
primary and, using flex technology, change the conic of the primary
(actually relaxing the stress):

    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11m.atm
    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11m.len
    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11m.txt
    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11m.zmx

At this distance, the coma is nearly gone; the design is roughly
lambda/250 RMS over the entire HDTV chip.

You could push further, say down to 5 m (only 25% longer than the
initial focal length):

    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11n.atm
    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11n.len
    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11n.txt
    http://users.rcn.com/rflrs/frc1-11n.zmx

At this object distance the, the object and image sizes are roughly
the same.

With that much aperture, one can only hope that that ant doesn't
figure out how to use a mirror to reflect sunlight!;-)
_______________________________________________
ATM mailing list http://www.atmlist.net/