The Eyeglass is a very large aperture (25–100-m) space telescope consisting of two distinct spacecraft, separated in space by several kilometers. A diffractive lens provides the telescope’s large aperture, and a separate, much smaller, space telescope serves as its mobile eyepiece. Use of a transmissive diffractive lens solves two basic problems associated with very large aperture space telescopes; it is inherently launchable (lightweight, packagable, and deployable) it and virtually eliminates the traditional, very tight surface shape tolerances faced by reflecting apertures. The potential drawback to use of a diffractive primary (very narrow spectral bandwidth) is eliminated by corrective optics in the telescope’s eyepiece; the Eyeglass can provide diffraction-limited imaging with either single-band (Δλ/λ ~ 0.1), multiband, or continuous spectral coverage.

© 1999 Optical Society of America

[Optical Society of America ]

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Article level metrics are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

Related Journal Articles

• Parametric Dependencies of High-diffraction-order Achromatized Aplanatic Configurations that Employ Circular or Crossed-linear Diffractive Optical Elements (AO)
• Large optical photon sieve (OL)
• Low-order aberration sensitivity of an optical vortex coronagraph (OL)
• Efficient Fresnel x-ray optics made simple (AO)
• Broadband antihole photon sieve telescope (AO)

Related Conference Papers

• Modified Offner Relay Systems for Future Adaptive Optical Telescopes
• Innovative optics for giant telescopes
• Fabrication of 6.5 m f/1.25 mirrors for the MMT and Magellan Telescopes
• Large-aperture, lightweight diffractive lenses for space applications
• Eyeglass: a color-corrected, large-aperture diffractive telescope