According to the characteristics of a catadioptric omnidirectional imaging system in larger fields and higher noise shielding, the catadioptric omnidirectional optical system with a field of view in 360° horizontal azimuth and 45° to 90° elevation and operating in the region of Solar Blind UV was developed to detect UV targets.The key elements of the UV detection technology were overviewed and the design parameters for the catadioptric omnidirectional imaging system in Solar Blind UV(SBUV) were determined.Based on the aberration theory and characters of UV optical system, the processes of optical design including the allocation of parameters, solution of initial structure and the lens splitting were presented. The design results show that the diameter of 80% encicled energy of SBUV panoramic imaging system is 20 μm, which is smaller than the pixel size of ICCD, and the MTF value of the system is higher than 0.7@17lp/mm over all fields. These data satisfy the requirements of the system. Furthermore, experiments are carried out to verity the feasibility of panoramic imaging in corona detection, and the results indicate that the image obtained has good quality.