Three-Mirror Anastigmat Telescope with an Unvignetted Flat Focal Plane

A new optical design concept of telescopes to provide an aberration-free, wide field, unvignetted flat focal plane is described. The system employs three aspheric mirrors to remove aberrations, and provides a semi-circular field of view with minimum vignetting. The third mirror reimages the intermediate image made by the first two-mirror system with a magnification factor on the order of unity. The present system contrasts with the Korsch system where the magnification factor of the third mirror is usually much larger than unity. Two separate optical trains can be deployed to cover the entire circular field, if necessary.