Abstract

The design goal for an atmospheric dispersion corrector is to find a set of prisms to cancel the atmospheric dispersion over a broad spectrum. Existing designs¹ using two prisms are limited by the transmittance of most materials at wavelengths under 0.37 µm. Given three prism materials (a,b,c), a relation between the apex angles of the prisms (θ_a, θ_b,θ_c) is obtained from the constraint of zero net deviation at the center wavelength λ_o: where the refractivity N_j is related to the index of refraction, n_j, by N_j(λ) = n_j (λ) − 1.

© 1985 Optical Society of America