There is provided an optical pickup including: an optical-system having an object-lens illuminating a first light for information recording or reproducing on a recording layer as a target and a second light on an optical-recording medium including a reference plane having a reflection-layer and the recording-layer at a layer position different from that of the reference-plane and on which information recording is performed through mark formation, and a focus-aligned-position-adjusting unit adjusting a focus-aligned position of the first light through the object-lens by changing collimation thereof incident to the object-lens; and a focusing-mechanism driving the object-lens in a focusing direction, wherein, when a depth of focus λ/NA2 defined by a wavelength λ of the first light and a numerical aperture NA of the object lens is set to α and the maximum-surface-blur range is denoted by D, the optical-system is designed so that a use magnification ratio β satisfies |β|≧√(D/α).