Patent ID: 7119954

Claim:
An optical instrument designed to be used on a satellite and allowing simultaneous or virtually simultaneous observations to be made in two angularly separated directions, comprising: at least two telescopes having angularly separated observation directions, each having one pupil selected from the group consisting of an exit pupil and a real and accessible intermediate pupil, and an image field selected from the group consisting of respective exit image field and intermediate image field, with said image field being of width at least three times larger than that of said pupil in a given direction; an optical device placed at said pupil and disposed so as to superimpose the two telescope image fields in a focal plane common to both telescopes, with an overlapping area covering said image field except in lateral regions having a width which is substantially that of said telescope pupil; and in said common focal plane, an assembly of at least one matrix detector, disposed and oriented in the superimposed region of said image fields.