Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Would a telescope that uses Fresnel lenses be more practical than using regular lenses?

The main advantage of a Fresnel lens is its reduced mass compared to a normal lens. Its disadvantages include difficulty of manufacture and diffraction from the discontinuities in the aperture, these I suspect are killers given the practicality of the alternatives, reflecting telescopes, to a Fresnel lens refactor.



Diffraction will give reduced contrast in the image, already noticeable in a reflector with partially obstructed aperture, but may well be worse with a Fresnel lens. But the difficulty in manufacture may well be the real limit given the relative ease of manufacturing large mirrors.



While I'm at it; it seems as thought making a achromatic Fresnel multiplet might be quite fiddly.



We might also note where there is no alternative, systems analogous to Fresnel lenses are used. The example I have in mind are grazing incidence x-ray telescopes.

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