An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
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A reflecting telescope whose primary mirror has a hole bored through the center to allow the reflected light from the convex secondary mirror be focused beyond the back end of the tube.

Cassegrain, named after the French priest and school teacher Laurent Cassegrain (1629-1693), who invented this system in 1672; → telescope.

A mixture of the → Cassegrain telescope with a very short → focal length and of a Schmidt design (due to the presence of the → corrective plate), used mainly in → amateur astronomy. The main advantage of this telescope is its compact design. However, Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes produce fainter images with less contrast than other telescope designs with similar → aperture sizes. This is due to the comparatively large → secondary mirror required to reflect the light back the → eyepiece.

→ Schmidt telescope; → Cassegrain telescope.