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Angled Secondary?

Started by kkirksea, 11/04/2002 07:55PM
Posted 11/04/2002 07:55PM Opening Post
Please excuse my ignorance... I'm curious...

Is it feasible to have an angled secondary mirror on a newtonian, instead of the traditional perpendicular 90 degrees, with acceptable results at the eyepiece?

For example, a 20" mirror with a 77.5" distance to a secondary angled at 45 degrees, to an "offset" focuser also angled at 45 degrees, 4" off to the side of "middle" structure.. and 14" off the axis? ( Which, I think, comes out to an F/4.8 scope with the eyepiece at 5' 8" height at zenith above the mirror? And also would bring in the center of gravity towards the base? )

Since I've doodled this out, if it *is* feasible then someone's probably already done this... are there examples of such in existence, and I suppose there's a name for such a critter?

Thanks in advance!
Posted 11/04/2002 09:04PM #1
Don't see any geometrical optical reason it shouldn't work. But baffling is tricky, if you use it somewhere where there's a little stray light from above, or if the moon is out, you could get lots of scattered light coming from unexpected directions since the eyepiece will be pointing partly up toward the open end of the tube / upper cage.