Resolving Power of Optical Instrument
Human eyes are not much powerful. They need some help in some cases. This is where optical instruments come into play. These instruments have a major role in various scientific fields. From the depths of space to the layers of hair, to see all the details we require these instruments, as we cannot see them using the naked eye. One of the important aspects of optical instruments is their resolving power.
Resolving Power is a quantity that characterizes the ability of optical instruments to produce distinct images of two points of an object that are placed nearby. Devices like microscopes and telescopes have various lenses and their combination is used to generate images of different objects. Limit of resolution is defined as the smallest linear or angular distance between the two points at which their images begin to merge. The inverse to the limit of resolution is called the resolving power.
In an ideal optical system (one without aberrations), the image of a point is not a point but a central disk of light surrounded by rings, it occurs due to the diffraction of light at the edges of optical components, which are alternately dark and bright in monochromatic light and rainbow-colored in white light.
Resolving Power of a Microscope and Telescope
Wave optics, also known as Physical optics, deals with the study of various phenomena such as diffraction, polarization, interference, resolution, and other occurrences. Wave optics is the segment of optics that focuses on the study and behavior of light and its wave characteristics. Wave optics particularly describes the connection between waves and rays of light. According to the wave theory of light, light is a form of energy, it travels through a medium in the form of transverse wave motion. The speed of light traveling through a medium depends upon the nature of the medium.
Here, the approximation is carried out by using ray optics for the estimation of the field on a surface. Integrating ray-estimated field over a mirror, lens, or aperture for the calculation of the scattered or transmitted field also gets involved later on. Wave optics stands as a witness to the scientific study of understanding the nature of light. One is the particle nature of light and the other is the wave nature of light.