Third-order aberrations of a prism with spherically curved surfaces

A third-order analysis of a spherically curved prism in a converging beam shows that solutions exist that permit the beam to pass without aberration. A reflecting telescope with such a prism in front of the focus would form a high-throughput astronomical spectrometer for stellar sources. This configuration would yield diffraction-limited performance at a single wavelength. A LiF prism has been designed for a rocket telescope that will image Jupiter from 1216 to 1608 Å with a spatial resolution limited by the 0.5-arcsec pixels of the detector.