A lighting unit including a light source lamp having a light emitting tube and an ellipsoid reflector, and an optical to parallelize illumination light released from the reflector, characterized in that: a first focal point P1, which is one of the two focal points P1 and P2 positioned inside and outside the reflector and is located on the side of the reflecting surface of the reflector, is contained within the light emitting tube, and a light emission center Q of the light emitting tube is offset in a virtual plane perpendicular to a reflector central axis OC; and a parallelizing lens has a lens optical axis on a reference axis L parallel to the reflector central axis OC, and the lens optical axis of the parallelizing lens is offset in a direction opposite to a direction where the emission center Q of the light emitting tube is offset from the reflector central axis OC.