Mirror Telescope

When I'm looking at the inside of a mirror telescope:

I'm wondering why the secondary mirror does not block half of the incoming light? Is it "transparent" in this direction?

• Why in the world would you think it doesn't block incoming light? Dec 10 '16 at 17:18
• @CarlWitthoft My guess is that netik thinks there should be a "hole" in your image where the secondary mirror is. This is nothing more than a basic misunderstanding with how the optics of a telescope works. Dec 10 '16 at 18:49
• @zephyr you're probably right there. Shall we regal him w/ stories of Fourier Transforms? :-) Dec 11 '16 at 13:04
• yeah @Zephyr that's basically what I thought haha. Dec 11 '16 at 17:33
• Perfectly reasonable thought unless you really learn how optics works. Unfortunately, its fairly complicated stuff and there are entire textbooks just on optics. It looks like the answer you accepted didn't fully explain why there isn't a dark spot in your image. If you're still interested, I can try to provide a brief answer to explain that. Dec 11 '16 at 18:00

In a Newtonian reflector, as pictured, the secondary mirror does block some of the light, but maybe less than you think. Even if the secondary were half the diameter of the primary, it would only block 1/4 of the light ($\ (1/2)^2$). In a more typical case the secondary would be somewhat smaller - perhaps a quarter of the size of the primary (or less). Hence a $1/16th$ or less is blocked, which is not too bad.