Design of an Afocal Telescope System Integrated with Digital Imaging for Enhanced Optical Performance

Area of Science:

• Optical Engineering
• Digital Imaging Systems

Background:

• Afocal telescope systems are crucial for magnification without focal length change.
• Integrating digital imaging capabilities requires careful optical design and aberration control.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and optimize a digital-imaging afocal telescope system.
• To achieve high-resolution, low-aberration imaging for precision applications.

Main Methods:

• Combined spherical and aspherical optical elements for enhanced flexibility and reduced aberrations.
• Ensured proper pupil matching between the afocal telescope and imaging subsystem.
• Independently optimized three imaging optical subsystems and a digital camera module.

Main Results:

• Achieved 16× overall magnification with near-diffraction-limited quality (RMS wavefront error of 0.0474λ, Strehl ratio of 0.915).
• Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) reached 0.42 at 80 lp/mm with distortion below 4.87%.
• Controlled chromatic aberrations with maximum lateral color deviations of 1.007 µm and 1.52 µm.

Conclusions:

• The designed digital-imaging afocal telescope system offers high-resolution, low-aberration performance.
• The system is suitable for demanding precision optical applications.
• Optimized pupil matching and element design are key to achieving superior imaging quality.