Abstract

The Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WF/PC), built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is one of five science instruments currently operating on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). As has been well known since shortly after the launch of HST on April 24, 1990, the telescope's optical system (known as the Optical Telescope Assembly - OTA) contains a large amount of spherical aberration. In the year following the launch of HST, much effort went into determining the cause and magnitude of the spherical aberration [1, 2, 3]. In parallel with these HST activities, the fabrication of the second generation WF/PC instrument was proceeding at JPL. At that time the obvious question to ask was how could the optical design of WF/PC-2 be modified to correct for the OTA spherical aberration.

© 1992 Optical Society of America