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In optics, the numerical aperture (NA) of an optical system is a dimensionless number that characterizes the range of angles over which the system can accept or emit light. By incorporating index of refraction in its definition, NA has the property that it is constant for a beam as it goes from one material to another, provided there is no ...
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).
Here, λ 0 is the wavelength in vacuum; NA is the numerical aperture for the optical component (maximum 1.3–1.4 for modern objectives with a very high magnification factor). Thus, the resolution limit is usually around λ 0 /2 for conventional optical microscopy. [17]
Axial optical units are more complicated, as there is no simple definition of resolution in the axial direction. There are two forms of the optical unit for the axial direction. For the case of a system with high numerical aperture, the axial optical units in a distance z are given by:
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 ...
From this it is clear that a good resolution (small δ) is connected with a high numerical aperture. The numerical aperture of a lens is defined as = where α 0 is half the angle spanned by the objective lens seen from the sample, and n is the refractive index of the medium between the lens and specimen (≈1 for air). State of the art ...
It is NA that determines optical resolution, in combination with the NA of the objective. Different condensers vary in their maximum and minimum numerical aperture, and the numerical aperture of a single condenser varies depending on the diameter setting of the condenser aperture. In order for the maximum numerical aperture (and therefore ...
An example of the use of f-numbers in photography is the sunny 16 rule: an approximately correct exposure will be obtained on a sunny day by using an aperture of f /16 and the shutter speed closest to the reciprocal of the ISO speed of the film; for example, using ISO 200 film, an aperture of f /16 and a shutter speed of 1 ⁄ 200 second. The f ...