Spherical aberration of camera-like eyes

Abstract

The longitudinal and transverse spherical aberrations are estimated for the reduced camera-like eyes of gastropod mollusks and humans, and by comparing the latter with the diffraction limit, its effect on the resolving power in the center of the retina is analyzed. It is shown that these two types of aberration remain unchanged in the mollusk because of the constant diameter of the pupil and it increases in the human eye with an increase in the pupil diameter. Furthermore, the longitudinal aberration is always greater than the transverse value, and the difference between them decreases with increasing pupil diameter. The magnitude of the spherical aberration is comparable to the value of the diffraction limit of resolution of the mollusk’s eye and begins to exceed the value of the diffraction limit of the resolving power of the human eye with a pupil diameter of more than 4.6 mm.