Design of an active metal mirror for large space telescopes
Goy M, Reinlein C, Devaney N, Kenny F, Eberhardt R, Tuennermann A (2018)
Publication Type: Conference contribution
Publication year: 2018
Journal
Publisher: SPIE
Book Volume: 10703
Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Event location: Austin, TX, USA
ISBN: 9781510619593
DOI: 10.1117/12.2313817
Abstract
Manufacturing telescopes with 4, 8 or 16 meter apertures is the most effective way to gather the light of faint exoplanets or look back towards the Big Bang. However, ultra-high optical quality large mirrors drastically increase the mass of such instruments - if made conventionally. Thinner, and hence lighter, primary mirrors suffer from gravity release, temperature changes and misalignment during launch. The resulting surface distortions as well as inherent surface errors which arise during manufacturing can be reduced by the implementation of active optics. We designed an active metal mirror as a key element for active optics in space. Our goal was to develop an ultra-stable, set-and-forget, lightweight active mirror with good wavefront correction performance. A simulation routine was developed to investigate the dependency between geometric parameters of the Deformable Mirror (DM) and the residual surface error after correction of Zernike modes. With the final 25 actuator mirror design we can achieve residual errors of less than 10 nm RMS for individual Zernike modes for an optical pupil of 103 mm diameter. It is able to withstand quasi-static launch loads, is insensitive to temperature changes and we can limit the overall weight to 2500 g including actuators and mirror mount.
Involved external institutions
Fraunhofer-Institut für Angewandte Optik und Feinmechanik (IOF) / Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering
Germany (DE)
University of Galway (NUIG) / Ollscoil na Gaillimhe
Ireland (IE)
Germany (DE)
University of Galway (NUIG) / Ollscoil na Gaillimhe
Ireland (IE)
How to cite
APA:
Goy, M., Reinlein, C., Devaney, N., Kenny, F., Eberhardt, R., & Tuennermann, A. (2018). Design of an active metal mirror for large space telescopes. In Dirk Schmidt, Laura Schreiber, Laird M. Close (Eds.), Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering. Austin, TX, USA: SPIE.
MLA:
Goy, Matthias, et al. "Design of an active metal mirror for large space telescopes." Proceedings of the Adaptive Optics Systems VI 2018, Austin, TX, USA Ed. Dirk Schmidt, Laura Schreiber, Laird M. Close, SPIE, 2018.
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