Abstract

The field-of-view limitations of phased telescope arrays have been discussed extensively in the literature. Residual aberrations of the individual telescopes are perhaps the most fundamental error source for high-performance, wide-angle imaging phased telescope arrays.¹ Simple telescope designs free from spherical aberration, coma, and astigmatism are readily obtained; however, field curvature and distortion severely limit the wide-angle performance of imaging phased telescope arrays.² Much recent effort has thus been expended in obtaining telescope designs that are well corrected for both field curvature and distortion.^3,4 However, the implementation of a given subtelescope design involves inevitable alignment errors that will primarily introduce third-order coma. An analytical treatment of the image degradation due to coma thus allowed us to establish alignment tolerances parametrically as a function of desired field of view, subaperture diameter, and array geometry.

© 1992 Optical Society of America