The Basics of Aberrations
An aberration is the failure of rays to converge at one focus because of limitations or defects in a lens or mirror. Basically, an aberration is a distortion of an image due to the fact that lenses will never behave exactly according to the way they were modeled. Types of aberrations vary due to the size, material composition, or thickness of a lens, or the position of an object.
Chromatic Aberration
A chromatic aberration, also called achromatism or chromatic distortion, is a distortion of colors . This aberration happens when the lens fails to focus all the colors on the same convergence point . This happens because lenses have a different index of refraction for different wavelengths of light. The refractive index decreases with increasing wavelength. These aberrations or distortions occur on the edges of color boundaries between bright and dark areas of an image. Since the index of refraction of lenses depends on color or wavelength, images are produced at different places and with different magnifications for different colors. shows chromatic aberration for a single convex lens. Since violet rays have a higher refractive index than red, they are bent more and focused closed to the lens. shows a two-lens system using a diverging lens to partially correct for this, but it is nearly impossible to do so completely.
The law of reflection is independent of wavelength, and therefore mirrors do not have this problem. This is why it is advantageous to use mirrors in telescopes and other optical systems.
Comatic Aberration
A comatic aberration, or coma, occurs when the object is off-center. Different parts of a lens of a mirror do not refract or reflect the image to the same point, as shown in . They can also be result of an imperfection in the lens or other component and result in off-axis point sources. These aberrations can cause objects to appear pear-shaped. They can also cause stars to appear distorted or appear to have tails, as with comets.
Other Aberrations
Spherical aberrations are a form of aberration where rays converging from the outer edges of a lens converge to a focus closer to the lens, and rays closer to the axis focus further. Astigmatisms are also a form of aberration in the lenses of the eyes where rays that propagate in two perpendicular planes have different foci. This can eventually cause a monochromatic image to distort vertically or horizontally. Another aberration or distortion is a barrel distortion where image magnification decreases with the distance from the optical axis. The apparent effect is that of an image which has been mapped around a sphere, like in a fisheye lens.