An optical axis is an imaginary line that passes through the geometrical center of an optical system such as a camera lens, microscope or telescopic sight.
Lens elements often have rotational symmetry about the axis.
The optical axis defines the path along which light propagates through the system, up to first approximation. For a system composed of simple lenses and mirrors, the axis passes through the center of curvature of each surface, and coincides with the axis of rotational symmetry. The optical axis is often coincident with the system's mechanical axis, but not always, as in the case of off-axis optical systems.
For an optical fiber, the optical axis is along the center of the fiber core, and is also known as the fiber axis.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia English article Optical axis, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.