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Calculating Focus Offsets

Focus offsets for a filter of thickness t can be calculated as follows:

Consider the light from a converging beam falling on a translucent plate of thickness t and refractive index n as shown in Figure  20.

   figure3379
Figure 20: The light path of the WHT-PF near the filter

Now the change in focus tex2html_wrap_inline6431

For the glass broad-band filters (and also the Kitt Peak filters), the refractive index is 1.6, so the focus offset = 0.38 tex2html_wrap_inline6433 . A second correction is needed, due to the corrector lens. In practise you have to multiply the correction calulated above by (f/f') tex2html_wrap_inline5617 , where f is the focal length without corrector lens, and f' the focal length of the whole system, resp. 2.5 and 2.8. The final change in focus is now tex2html_wrap_inline6437 .

For the interference filters, the values for the refractive indices are approximately 1.45 for the OII(3727Å), SII(4070Å), HeII, H tex2html_wrap_inline6439 , OIII, HeI(5876Å), OI and NII filters, and 1.48 for the H tex2html_wrap_inline5501 , SII(6724Å), OII(7325Å), SIII(9069Åand 9532Å) and HeI(10830Å) filters. (N.B. Do not use the refractive index of the substrate, which, although of large refractive index ( tex2html_wrap_inline5557 2.1), is thin and enclosed in thick glass.

The telescope can be automatically compensated for the filter thickness using the ICL PSETFOC routine (see Section 4.5).



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Wed Sep 17 12:36:20 BST 1997