Abstract
Since the atmosphere is an inhomogeneous refractive medium, images formed with light which has passed through the atmosphere in general exhibit color aberrations. For example, at sea level the atmospheric dispersion separates the red (λR = 7000 Å) and the blue (λB = 4000 Å) images of a star at a zenith angle of 45° by approximately 1.4″.
This paper shows that by considering as a single problem the refraction of the atmosphere and the color aberrations of the telescope optics, it is possible to devise a telescope which almost completely compensates for the lateral color aberration arising from atmospheric refraction. In particular it is shown that for an objective consisting of BSC-2 glass the lateral color aberration at the final focus produced by the atmosphere is reduced by a factor Γ, where Γ = 0.006 ± 0.002 for a bandwidth from 3650 to 5876 Å, and Γ = 0.010 ± 0.002 for a bandwidth from 3650 to 6563 Å. For an objective consisting of a flint glass, Γ = 0.012 ± 0.002 for a bandwidth from 4047 to 10140 Å.
© 1966 Optical Society of America
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