[Illustration: Fig. 10.--Principal Focus of Concave Lens.]
In the case of a concave lens (Fig. 10), rays incident parallel to the principal axis diverge after passing through; and their directions, if produced backwards, would approximately meet in a point F; this is its _principal focus_. It is, however, only a virtual focus, inasmuch as the emergent rays do not actually pass through it, whereas the principal focus of a converging lens is real.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Principal Centre of Lens.]
=Optical Centre of a Lens.=--_Secondary Axes._--Let O and O′ (Fig. 11) be the centres of the two spherical surfaces of a lens. Draw any two parallel radii, O I, O′ E, to meet these surfaces, and let the joining line I E represent a ray passing through the lens. This ray makes equal angles with the normals at I and E, since these latter are parallel by construction; hence the incident and emergent rays S I, E R also make equal angles with the normals, and are therefore parallel. In fact, if tangent planes (indicated by the dotted lines in the figure) are drawn at I and E, the whole course of the ray S I E R will be the same as if it had passed through a plate bounded by these planes.
Let C be the point in which the line I E cuts the principal axis, and let R, R′ denote the radii of the two spherical surfaces. Then from the similarity of the triangles O C I, O′ C E, we have (O C)/(C O′) = R′/R; which shows that the point C divides the line of centres O O′ in a definite ratio depending only on the radii. Every ray whose direction on emergence is parallel to its direction before entering the lens, must pass through the point C in traversing the lens; and conversely, every ray which in its course through the lens traverses the point C, has parallel directions at incidence and emergence. The point C which possesses this remarkable property is called the _centre_, or _optical centre_, of the lens.
This diagram may also be taken to prove my former proposition, that the convex lens is practically a form of two prisms combined.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.--Conjugate Foci, one Real, the other Virtual.]
=Conjugate Foci, one Real, one Virtual.=--When two foci are on the same side of the lens, one (the most distant of the two) must be virtual. For example, in Fig. 12, if S, S′ are a pair of conjugate foci, one of them S being between the principal focus F and the lens, rays sent to the lens at a luminous point at S, will, after emergence, diverge as if from S′; and rays coming from the other side of the lens, if they converge to S′ before incidence, will in reality be made to meet in S. As S moves towards the lens, S′ moves in the same direction more rapidly; and they become coincident at the surface of the lens.