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Spherizing a seven-power, wide-field eyepiece design
1University of California, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87544, USA.
Applied Optics
|January 9, 2010
Summary
A new eyepiece design replaces difficult aspherical lenses with simpler spherical ones. This optical redesign overcomes manufacturing challenges, improving performance for wider applications.
Area of Science:
- Optical Engineering
- Lens Design
Background:
- A seven-power, wide-field eyepiece design featured two paraboloidal surfaces.
- The aspherical nature of these surfaces posed manufacturing challenges, hindering mass production.
Purpose of the Study:
- To redesign the eyepiece to eliminate aspherical surfaces.
- To maintain or improve optical performance compared to the original design.
- To enable large-scale manufacturability.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the LASL Lens Design Code for optical redesign.
- Replaced aspherical paraboloidal surfaces with spherical ones.
- Evaluated the performance of the new all-spherical design.
Main Results:
- Successfully replaced both aspherical surfaces with spherical counterparts.
- The redesigned eyepiece exceeded the performance of the original concept.
- A prototype demonstrated the design's excellent optical qualities.
Conclusions:
- The all-spherical eyepiece design is manufacturable and offers superior performance.
- This redesign provides a viable solution for producing high-quality wide-field eyepieces.
- The LASL Lens Design Code proved effective for optimizing optical systems.
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