Abstract

The current trend in building medium-size telescopes for wide-field imaging is to use a Ritchey–Chrétien (RC) design with a multilens corrector near the focus. Our goal is to find a cost-effective alternative design to the RC system for seeing-limited observations. We present an $f/4.5$ all-spherical catadioptric system with a $1.5°$ field of view. The system consists of a $0.8\mathrm{m}$ spherical primary and $0.4\mathrm{m}$ flat secondary mirror combined with a meniscus lens and followed by a three-lens field corrector. The optical performance is comparable to an equivalent $f/4.5$ RC system. We conclude that, for telescopes with apertures up to $2\mathrm{m}$, the catadioptric design is a good alternative to the RC system.

© 2010 Optical Society of America

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