The two classes of Aberrations

Aberrations fall into two classes: monochromatic and chromatic.

Monochromatic aberrations are caused by the geometry of the lens or mirror and occur both when light is reflected and when it is refracted. They appear even when using monochromatic light, hence the name.

Chromatic aberrations on the other hand are caused by dispersion, because of this dispersion, different wavelengths of light come to focus at different points. Chromatic aberrations do not occur when monochromatic light is used.

Well, a few days ago we had a chromatic aberration above, and today we have a monochromatic one below!

Not really, but why have one aberration when you can have two!

“His mine”!………”No his Mine”!

6 thoughts on “The two classes of Aberrations

    • Thanks and sorry John. I should have said a light “aberration” is when the light is bent (reflected or refracted) making it appear different or in a different location. A bit like when a star appears to be in a different spot because its light is bent by the earth’s atmosphere. My “aberration” models are “aberrations” of their previous self and have nothing to do with light so I should have shut up!
      SORRY!

      Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s