Abbe condenser

Description

A compound lens designed by Ernst Abbe as a substage condenser for transmitted light, brightfield microscopes. An Abbe condenser can consist of one to three lenses providing a combined numerical aperture range of up to 1.3 that makes it useful for medium- to high-magnification objectives. However, the condensers are not suitable for oil immersion objectives (McCrone and Delly 1972). In most cases, the Abbe lens system is not corrected for Spherical aberration or Chromatic aberration.

Synonyms and Related Terms

Abbe Kondensor (Deut.); condenseur d'Abbe (Fr.);

Resources and Citations

• Walter C. McCrone, John Gustave Delly, The Particle Atlas, W. McCrone Associates, Chicago, IV, 1972 Comment: Three lens versions give numerical aperture of 1:40

• Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993

• ASTM, Standard Terminology of Microscopy, Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Section 14, General Methods and Instrumentation, ASTM, E175, 75-78, May 1982