In article <3f3747b3$1@news.povray.org>,
 sascha <sas### [at] userssourceforgenet> wrote:

>  > POV-Ray can make perfectly parabolic mirrors and reflect light from
>  > them. It's far from impossible.
> 
> Well, I think it's *nearly* impossible to simulate optical instruments 
> like telescopes with POV-Ray. Of course you could place the camera at 
> the focal-point of the lens or mirror and get the magnification effect, 
> but you can't simulate other effects.

Telescopes could be done even without photons. A reflecting telescope 
could be done in any version of POV that supported reflection, a 
refracting one in any version supporting refraction.


>  Of course you could place the camera at the focal-point of the lens 
>  or mirror and get the magnification effect, 

You can put the camera at the eyepiece, as you would do with a 
real-world camera and telescope.


> but you can't simulate other effects.

You mean wave effects like diffraction? It is true you can't simulate 
it, though you could fake it if you really wanted. POV is not designed 
for optics simulations, but it is a lot more powerful than you seem to 
think. 


> For example, I once tried to simulate how saturn would look if being 
> viewed through a telescope with different mirror-diameters (the larger 
> the mirror, the sharper the picture) - but it didn't work. If anybody 
> has ever managed to simulate such things with POV-Ray I'd be interested...

Well, with astronomical telescopes, you will just run into precision 
problems. This has nothing to do with how well POV simulates optics.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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