Drawing upon its uniquely stable production facility - Optical Surfaces Ltd. has established itself as a leading supplier of larger diameter hyperbolic mirrors and the extremely tight tolerances and accuracy that these optics demand.
Hyperbolic telescope mirror used for Earth Observation satellite project. Image Credit: Optical Surfaces Ltd.
Hyperbolic mirrors are used in telescopes to correct aberrations in Ritchey-Chrétien designs, such as the Hubble telescope, by focusing off-axis light, allowing for wider fields of view and high optical performance. They are also often used as secondary mirrors in Cassegrain telescopes to create a virtual focus for eyepiece placement, which is essential for deep-space observation and satellites where precision is paramount. Hyperbolic mirrors from Optical Surfaces are used in many prestigious deep space and earth observation telescope including BNSC’s Top Sat, NASA swift explorer, ESA’s XMM and NigeriaSAT-2 projects.
Optical Surfaces skilled optical engineers routinely produce hyperbolic mirrors up to 500 mm diameter with typical wavefront error of only lambda/20 P-V, surface finish of 10/5 and microroughness of less than 1.2 nm RMS. These ultra-smooth hyperbolic mirrors can be supplied with a coating exactly optimized for a specific application. In space borne telescope platforms, where weight is an issue, Optical Surfaces can also produce light weighted hyperbolic mirrors.