Northrop Corporation

Microcosm, Inc.

A Phillip Simpson

Seymour Levine

John M Kennel

Mitsuo Kawahara

Three folded Maksutov/Bouwers telescopes formed in a single housing to provide focused images from three angularly spaced fields of view. The fields of view are positioned 30.degree. from a central axis and are spaced 120.degree. apart in azimuth. Light enters the telescopes through a common upper aperture, in which a concentric corrector is installed, is reflected from a common lower plane mirror and from one of three inclined mirrors into one of three spherical primary mirrors. The spherical mirrors focus the respective beams onto three focal planes located outside the housing, through openings in the respective inclined mirrors. The concentric corrector compensates for spherical aberration in the spherical primary mirrors, without the need for holographic optical elements, resulting in a simple, compact, lightweight and low-cost device.

Low-cost light-weight star tracking telescope

A star tracker for generating positional information for a vehicle includes a telescope 40 having multiple fields of view for imaging stellar objects. The telescope includes a plurality of radiation detectors 58 and an input lens 45 comprised of, in one embodiment of the invention, a plurality of holographic elements 45a and 45b. The holographic elements direct incident radiation originating from a plurality of stellar objects to an associated one of the radiation detectors. In another embodiment the multiple field of view telescope is comprised of a monocentric ball lens 80. The tracker may further include a multiplexer 60 for sequentially reading out a signal from each of the radiation detectors and a controller 62 coupled to the multiplexer for receiving the signals and for determining from the positions of the stellar objects imaged by the telescope a position of the vehicle.

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Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, United States of America

A Phillip Simpson