amsikking: Microscope objectives
GitHub repositoryContents
- Numerical aperture
- Working distance
- Immersion
- Infinity correction
- Collection
- Transmission
- Color correction
- Plan correction
- Tube lens
- Magnification
- Field of view
- Focal length
- Band limit
- Point spread function
- Optical pixels
- Mechanics
- Back focal plane
Description
An introduction to 'infinity' corrected microscope objectives. These lenses are some of the most sophisticated and expensive 'stock' optics around, and they make excellent building blocks for complex systems. However, the specifics of the design and performance is usually unavailable. There are, however, some general properties and characteristics we can infer and use for instrument design.
- To quickly see the basic properties of a particular objective lens simply edit and run this Python script: microscope_objective_properties.py
Note: not all objectives are fully infinity corrected. According to Zhang 2019 this limits the large manufacturers to Nikon and Olympus (Japanese), since Zeiss and Leica (German) correct lateral color with the tube lens. The status of Mitutoyo is unclear, since they are Japanese it is assumed they adhere to full correction in the objective, although this should be verified for sensitive applications.