Jacob Metius else from claiming them. In October 1608, the States General discussed Jacob Metius's patent application for a device for "seeing faraway things as though nearby," consisting of a convex and concave lens in a tube, and the combination magnified three or four times. His use of a convex objective lens and concave eyepiece may have been a superior design to Hans Lippershey telescope design which was submitted for patent only a few weeks before Metius'. Metius informed the States General that he was familiar with the secrets of glassmaking, and that he could make an even better telescope with the
Lens (optics) object off the optical axis of the lens is imaged, where rays pass through the lens at an angle to the axis θ. Rays that pass through the centre of a lens of focal length "f" are focused at a point with distance from the axis. Rays passing through the outer margins of the lens are focused at different points, either further from the axis (positive coma) or closer to the axis (negative coma). In general, a bundle of parallel rays passing through the lens at a fixed distance from the centre of the lens are focused to a ring-shaped