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A refracting telescope (also called a refractor) is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens as its objective to form an image (also referred to a dioptric telescope). The refracting telescope design was originally used in spyglasses and astronomical telescopes but is also used for long-focus camera lenses .
Snell's law (also known as the Snell–Descartes law, the ibn-Sahl law, [1] and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air.
The telescope is more a discovery of optical craftsmen than an invention of a scientist. [1] [2] The lens and the properties of refracting and reflecting light had been known since antiquity, and theory on how they worked was developed by ancient Greek philosophers, preserved and expanded on in the medieval Islamic world, and had reached a significantly advanced state by the time of the ...
The first of these was the Hamiltonian telescope patented by W. F. Hamilton in 1814. The Schupmann medial telescope designed by German optician Ludwig Schupmann near the end of the 19th century placed the catadioptric mirror beyond the focus of the refractor primary and added a third correcting/focusing lens to the system.
Diagram showing displacement of the Sun's image at sunrise and sunset Comparison of inferior and superior mirages due to differing air refractive indices, n. Atmospheric refraction is the deviation of light or other electromagnetic wave from a straight line as it passes through the atmosphere due to the variation in air density as a function of height. [1]
The observation of sub-wavelength structures with microscopes is difficult because of the Abbe diffraction limit.Ernst Abbe found in 1873, [2] and expressed as a formula in 1882, [3] that light with wavelength , traveling in a medium with refractive index and converging to a spot with half-angle will have a minimum resolvable distance of
Image distance in a spherical mirror + = () Subscripts 1 and 2 refer to initial and final optical media respectively. These ratios are sometimes also used, following simply from other definitions of refractive index, wave phase velocity, and the luminal speed equation:
where n is the index of refraction of the medium in which the lens is working (1.00 for air, 1.33 for pure water, and typically 1.52 for immersion oil; [1] see also list of refractive indices), and θ is the half-angle of the maximum cone of light that can enter or exit the lens.