Aberrations of ellipsoidal reflectors for unit magnification.

Ellipsoidal reflectors are useful for the 1:1 imaging of small objects without spherical and chromatic aberration. The magnitude of the off-axis aberrations of such reflectors is computed by application of Fermat's principle to the Hamiltonian point characteristic. The limiting form of the mirror aperture for which these aberrations do not exceed a set tolerance is an ellipse whose semiaxes depend on object size and angle of incidence.