Conal Elliott

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The dependence of the angle of refraction on color has the unfortunate consequence that the glass lenses in telescopes like those of Galileo, Kepler, and Huygens focus the different colors in white light differently, blurring the images of distant objects. To avoid this chromatic aberration Newton in 1669 invented a telescope in which light is initially focused by a curved mirror rather than by a glass lens. (The light rays are then deflected by a plane mirror out of the telescope to a glass eyepiece, so not all chromatic aberration was eliminated.) With a reflecting telescope only six inches ...more
To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science
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