if someone makes them, will you come?

For the past months I've been experimenting with fabrication methods for large, telescope-scale gradient index lenses. These would be ultrathin, ultralight, and if they became available relatively cheaply (you couldn't get one now unless you were prepared to slap down a six or more figure sum) the question is whether the refractor-oriented community might be willing to try them out, or would they be more likely to say 'thanks but no thanks' and stick to the tried-and-true, despite that meaning being limited to smaller apertures (remembering that I'm using reflector apertures as a benchmark)?

Wouldn't you like to be able to stare the mirror boys right in the face and say, 'analyze this!', aperture wise? Or maybe you just LIKE top-heavy?

A refractor is a refractor, regardless of lens type- so I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Jess Tauber

Jess, I think that if you could make an affordable large diameter grin lens that performed comparably to a traditional lens, the amateur community would beat a path to your door. Performance would mean everything though. A 14 inch objective lens would be swell, but if it couldn't form crisp images....

Good luck! Jim

Are you talking about a lens in which the index of refraction for each element changes with radius from the center?

What would a 8in F5 lens cost?

Grin only adresses one aberration - spherical. How do you propose to adress chromatic aberrations over a very large spectrum range?

RC