Fast catadioptric telescopes for CCD observation of transient events and space surveillance

Work covers design and optimization of optical systems for observation of transient events and moving targets in space, such as gamma-ray bursts, asteroids, comets, meteors, satellites, space debris etc. Several all-spherical full-aperture catadioptric designs with focal ratios within f/3-f/0.8 range optimized for large format CCD detectors are presented. Analyzed systems may be grouped in following families: a) Prime-focus/folded Newtonian systems: 1. Hamilton. 2. Sonnefeld. 3. Richter-Slevogt. b) Cassegrain systems: 1. Richter-Slevogt-Cassegrain. 2. Hamilton-Cassegrain. 3. Shenker. Principal results of the work are: 1. Development of several optical designs suitable for realization. 2. Comparison of systems of different design families with comparable performance. 3.. Atmospheric dispersion correction in large-aperture systems is analyzed, with proposal of compensation by motion of principal optical elements. 4. Historical survey and comparison of all-spherical full-aperture catadioptric systems is performed.