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From: jset_cif@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Jeff Setzer)
Newsgroups: sci.astro,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Making Your Own Microscopes
Message-ID: <12237@ur-cc.UUCP>
Date: 16 Feb 91 03:53:15 GMT
References: <1991Feb14.051740.14508@ms.uky.edu> <39308@cup.portal.com>
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In <39308@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:

>My dad once made a little microscope, about 100X.  He did this by
>drawing a glass rod into a capillary over a Bunsen burner, breaking
>the capillary, then feeding the broken end into the flame to form
>a tiny glass sphere.  He taped this over a commercially-prepared
>microscope slide (in contact with the slide), and by holding it
>right up to your eyeball, you could see the magnified image of the
>slide.

>I've often wondered whether the same trick could be used to make a
>super-cheap lens for a CCD imager.  It would have tremendous spherical
>distortion, but that could be taken care of in software.

Well, I don't know if it could really be taken care of in software.  You can
only do so many things with an aberred image...no matter what algorithms you
use in the software.  Look at Hubble...even though we know exactly how much
SA it has, it still won't perform up to par until new correcting lenses are
introduced.
--
ASTROSETZ            | Internet: jset_cif@cc.rochester.edu (U of Rochester, NY)
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