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The NC16 Optical design

The basic idea behind the optical components is to combine a single telescope into a corrected newtonian and a corrected cassegrain.

The primary mirror consists of a 16 inch F3.5 parabolic mirror.

For newtonian configuration, a diagonal flat mirror of 130 mm minor axis diameter is used. The corrector is a 3" wynne corrector. The use of a 0.95X ASA corrector leaves the focal ration down to F:3.3.

The cassegrain design is more complicated. The secondary mirror consists of a convex hyperbolic mirror of 165 mm diameter ( 41% obstruction). The light is reflected and pointed to the bored primary (100 mm central hole) , where a pair of two BK7 80 mm meniscus correct for optical aberrations. Overall correction is difraction limited up to a 52 mm circle. Centering of the secondary is tolerant up to 0.3 mm, and aixal shift up to +/- 1 mm. Corrector meniscus are very easy to manufacture because they have spherical shape, and the design is very tolerant to radius deviations. Tolerance on spacing and thickness is also very high (few mm) while keeping difraction limited behaviour. The most complicated part to manufacture is the secondary mirror, that has 2000 mm radius of curvature with a conic constant of -6. Deviations of the conic of +/- 0.25 keep the design under difraction limited performance. The focal length is 3200mm, with a focal ration of F:8

 

Spot diagrams for 0, 12.5 and 25.5 mm fields.

 

Spot diagram for wavelgths from 0.4 to 0.7 microns and field up to 25.5mm

 

 

MTF

 

 
Field curvature and distortion
 
Vigneting. Signal starts at 0.8 due to central obstruction.
 

 

 

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