Paper
30 November 2009 Baffle design for a Cassegrain telescope
Cheng-Fang Ho, Shenq-Tsong Chang
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
The baffle design and analysis of a panchromatic push-broom camera were investigated for a Cassegrain telescope in this paper. A specially designed flower-look baffle is surrounded by the hole of the primary mirror and secondary mirror. With this design, the flower-look baffle can block the direct-hit stray light and reduce the off-axis field of view (FOV) vignetting. The modulation transfer function (MTF) of this design is increased 10 % as compared to the performance of the traditional baffles. This camera is equipped with a large field of view (FOV) which can get a wide swath and can provide high-resolution image for observation and monitoring of environmental pollution and disaster. The optical system assembly (OSA) of the camera is a kind of Cassegrain telescope which contains two reflection mirrors and five corrected lenses. Compared with other off-axis telescopes, this traditional optical configuration can be manufactured and aligned much easily. In a large FOV Cassegrain design, the central hole of the primary mirror is larger than that in a traditional Cassegrain design. The rays out from FOV pass though the central hole easily and reach the focal plan assembly (FPA) directly. This kind of stray light carries strong energy flux which significantly reduces the image performance. A baffle subsystem is needed in order to avoid the direct stray light exposure. The performance evaluation of the baffle system and the MTF comparison results from two kinds of baffle shapes are included in this study. It indicates that the flower-look shape is more efficient in keeping the relative illumination and MTF than traditional tube shape. The maximum benefit of the flower-look baffle is found for increasing off-axis tangential MTF.
© (2009) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Cheng-Fang Ho and Shenq-Tsong Chang "Baffle design for a Cassegrain telescope", Proc. SPIE 7506, 2009 International Conference on Optical Instruments and Technology: Optical Systems and Modern Optoelectronic Instruments, 75061S (30 November 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.838089
Lens.org Logo
CITATIONS
Cited by 6 scholarly publications and 2 patents.
Advertisement
Advertisement
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission  Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace
KEYWORDS
Modulation transfer functions

Telescopes

Mirrors

Stray light

Optical instrument design

Sensors

Space telescopes

RELATED CONTENT

Fast and compact wide-field Gregorian telescope
Proceedings of SPIE (September 17 2012)
SALT prime focus payload development
Proceedings of SPIE (September 28 2004)
PLATO: detailed design of the telescope optical units
Proceedings of SPIE (August 05 2010)

Back to Top