Disclosed is a negative compensation type large-target-surface medium-wave refrigeration infrared continuous zooming optical system. The optical system adopts secondary imaging and continuous zoomingdesign, and optical and lens design to obtain a combination of only 10 lenses, has relatively high transmittance, improves system sensitivity, and effectively controls the total length of the opticalsystem; by adopting a cylindrical cam to control motion of a zoom group and a compensation group, the advantage of a simple compensation structure is achieved; a field diaphragm structure is added, sothat influence of stray light on the imaging of the system is reduced, and the signal-to-noise ratio of the system is improved; cold diaphragm is adopted, and the realization efficiency is 100%, so that the light beam energy loss is reduced, and the system sensitivity is improved; the optical axis direction of the system is changed through two plane reflecting mirrors, so that the total length ofthe optical system is shortened effectively; and the continuous zooming optical system has the advantages of high imaging quality, short optical total length, simple zoom and compensation structure,high signal-to-noise ratio and high sensitivity, and fills up the blank of a continuous zoom optical system applicable to a 1280*1024 large target surface and medium-wave refrigeration type detector in China.