What creates aberrations in a real lens, just imperfections in the material?
lycorisradiatu
@ MichaelYu15 It seems like aberrations in real life can be caused by various factors instead of just the imperfections in the lens material. For example, spherical aberration can be caused by light rays passing through the outer edges of a lens refracted differently from those passing through the center. Chromatic Aberration can be caused by different wavelengths of light refracted differently by the lens elements, etc.
Milotrince
@MichaelYu15 Adding onto @lycorisradiatu's comment, I have aberration in my eyes (astigmatism) which means my eye is not perfectly round and is lumpy so I see the world slightly distorted and need special glasses 🥲
SudhanvaKulkarni123
I was curious how the aberration in a lens could be measured since designers would probably want some way to quantify it if they are to account for it. Turns out aberration is an extremely well studied topics. There are various metrics to quantify the aberrations of a lens. One example is what is known as Transverse Ray Aberration (TRA). It is defined as the distance on the image plane that a real ray differs from the ideal image point. For a more in-depth explanation, one can look at this blog.
llejj
It is mathematically impossible for a lens to focus light perfectly https://phys.org/news/2004-09-mathematical-analysis-lens.html
What creates aberrations in a real lens, just imperfections in the material?
@ MichaelYu15 It seems like aberrations in real life can be caused by various factors instead of just the imperfections in the lens material. For example, spherical aberration can be caused by light rays passing through the outer edges of a lens refracted differently from those passing through the center. Chromatic Aberration can be caused by different wavelengths of light refracted differently by the lens elements, etc.
@MichaelYu15 Adding onto @lycorisradiatu's comment, I have aberration in my eyes (astigmatism) which means my eye is not perfectly round and is lumpy so I see the world slightly distorted and need special glasses 🥲
I was curious how the aberration in a lens could be measured since designers would probably want some way to quantify it if they are to account for it. Turns out aberration is an extremely well studied topics. There are various metrics to quantify the aberrations of a lens. One example is what is known as Transverse Ray Aberration (TRA). It is defined as the distance on the image plane that a real ray differs from the ideal image point. For a more in-depth explanation, one can look at this blog.
It is mathematically impossible for a lens to focus light perfectly https://phys.org/news/2004-09-mathematical-analysis-lens.html