The Misalignment Induced Aberrations Of Tma Telescopes

The next major space-borne observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be a 6.6M field-biased, obscured, three-mirror anastigmat (TMA). Over the used field of view, the performance of TMA telescopes is dominated by 3 rd order misalignment aberrations. Here it is shown that two dominant 3 order misalignment aberrations arise for any TMA telescope. One aberration, field constant 3rd order coma is a well known misalignment aberration commonly seen in two-mirror Ritchey Chretien telescopes. The second aberration, field-asymmetric, field-linear, 3rd order astigmatism is a new and unique image orientation dependence with field derived here for the first time using nodal aberration theory. © 2008 Optical Society of America