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Numerical aperture of a thin lens. Numerical aperture is not typically used in photography. Instead, the angular aperture of a lens (or an imaging mirror) is expressed by the f-number, written f /N, where N is the f-number given by the ratio of the focal length f to the diameter of the entrance pupil D: =.
where N is the uncorrected f-number, NA i is the image-space numerical aperture of the lens, | | is the absolute value of the lens's magnification for an object a particular distance away, and P is the pupil magnification. Since the pupil magnification is seldom known it is often assumed to be 1, which is the correct value for all symmetric lenses.
Here NA is the numerical aperture, is half the included angle of the lens, which depends on the diameter of the lens and its focal length, is the refractive index of the medium between the lens and the specimen, and is the wavelength of light illuminating or emanating from (in the case of fluorescence microscopy) the sample.
The ability of a lens to resolve detail is usually determined by the quality of the lens, but is ultimately limited by diffraction.Light coming from a point source in the object diffracts through the lens aperture such that it forms a diffraction pattern in the image, which has a central spot and surrounding bright rings, separated by dark nulls; this pattern is known as an Airy pattern, and ...
Memorial in Jena, Germany to Ernst Karl Abbe, who approximated the diffraction limit of a microscope as = , where d is the resolvable feature size, λ is the wavelength of light, n is the index of refraction of the medium being imaged in, and θ (depicted as α in the inscription) is the half-angle subtended by the optical objective lens (representing the numerical aperture).
The angular aperture of a thin lens with focal point at F and an aperture of diameter . The angular aperture of a lens is the angular size of the lens aperture as seen from the focal point: = (/) = where
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A gradient-index lens with a parabolic variation of refractive index (n) with radial distance (x). The lens focuses light in the same way as a conventional lens. If the refractive index of a medium is not constant but varies gradually with the position, the material is known as a gradient-index (GRIN) medium and is described by gradient index ...