Patent ID: 7699474

Claim:
A projector, comprising: a lighting device which includes two light source devices each of which has an ellipsoidal reflector and an arc tube having a light emission center in the vicinity of a first focus of the ellipsoidal reflector and is disposed such that the two ellipsoidal reflectors face each other, a reflection system which has a reflection element in the vicinity of a second focus of each of the ellipsoidal reflectors and reflects illumination lights emitted from the two light source devices substantially in the same direction, a converging lens which guides the illumination light coming from the reflection system to an optical element disposed downstream, a first lens array which has a plurality of first small lenses for dividing the light guided by the converging lens into a plurality of partial lights, a second lens array which has second small lenses corresponding to the first small lenses of the first lens array, and a superimposing lens which superimposes the respective partial lights emitted from the second lens array on an illumination target area; an electro-optic modulating device which modulates the light emitted from the lighting device according to image information; and a projection system which projects light modulated by the electro-optic modulating device, wherein the two light source devices are disposed in such positions that the respective light source optical axes of the two light source devices are substantially perpendicular to the projection optical axis of the projection system, and the reflection system is constructed such that the center axes of the respective illumination lights reflecting from the reflection element and entering the converging lens are inclined toward an illumination optical axis of the lighting device by a predetermined angle.