Analysis for the impact by the axis supporting structure on the large aperture mirror in Cassegrain system

Lightweight, high stability, and high-temperature adaptability are the primary considerations when designing the primary mirror of a micro/nano satellite remote sensing camera. In this paper, the optimized design and experimental verification of the large-aperture primary mirror of the space camera with a diameter of Φ610 mm is carried out. First, the design performance index of the primary mirror was determined according to the coaxial tri-reflective optical imaging system. Then, SiC, with excellent comprehensive performance, was selected as the primary mirror material. The initial structural parameters of the primary mirror were obtained using the traditional empirical design method. Due to the improvement of SiC material casting complex structure reflector technology level, the initial structure of the primary mirror was improved by integrating the flange with the primary mirror body design. The support force acts directly on the flange, changing the transmission path of the traditional back plate support force, and has the advantage that the primary mirror surface shape accuracy can be maintained for a long time when subjected to shock, vibration, and temperature changes. Then, a parametric optimization algorithm based on the mathematical method of compromise programming was used to optimize the design of the initial structural parameters of the improved primary mirror and the flexible hinge, and finite element simulation was conducted on the optimally designed primary mirror assembly. Simulation results show that the root mean square (RMS) surface error is less than λ/50 (λ = 632.8 nm) under gravity, 4 °C temperature rise, and 0.01 mm assembly error. The mass of the primary mirror is 8.66 kg. The maximum displacement of the primary mirror assembly is less than 10 μm, and the maximum inclination angle is less than 5″. The fundamental frequency is 203.74 Hz. Finally, after the primary mirror assembly was precision manufactured and assembled, the surface shape accuracy of the primary mirror was tested by ZYGO interferometer, and the test value was 0.02 λ. The vibration test of the primary mirror assembly was conducted at a fundamental frequency of 208.25 Hz. This simulation and experimental results show that the optimized design of the primary mirror assembly meets the design requirements of the space camera.

For balloon-borne telescopes, the primary mirror is the most important optical element, but designing a primary mirror with an excellent overall performance is a challenge. To comprehensively consider the contradictory objectives of the root mean square (RMS) surface error under gravity in the X and Z directions, the mass and fundamental frequency of the primary mirror, a parametric primary mirror design using the compromise programming method based on topology optimization is proposed. The parametric design of the compromise programming method based on topology optimization is used to find the optimal solution for X-direction RMS (RMSx), Z-direction RMS (RMSz), mass, and fundamental frequency. Compared with the initial primary mirror structure designed according to traditional experience, the overall performance is improved. Results show that the respective mass of the primary mirror, the RMSx and the RMSz decreased by 8.5%, 14.3% and 10.5% compared to those before optimization. Comprehensive consideration can prove the effectiveness of parametric design based on the topology optimization of the primary mirror. This method provides a reference for the design of other primary mirrors for balloon-borne telescope and space cameras.

With the rapid progress of technology and manufacture, the number of telescopes in space is mounting dramatically. Considering launch cost, more and more engineers nowadays pursue lightweight and compact design of telescope in space. Traditional design scheme usually has a support plate for primary reflective mirror. It will take some space for other parts. The paper, taking a primary reflective mirror with 600mm in diameter as an example, put forward a novel design of circle support component instead of traditional support plate. It utilized a special structural layout to save more space. The paper specified this design scheme and made comparison between these two design schemes. The paper also gave the assembling method of the primary reflective mirror and circle support component, which would verify its feasibility in engineering practice in a virtual way. The novel structure design in this paper will give some guidance to engineers and designers, who are devoting themselves to designing space telescopes.

We have designed a 30 cm cryogenic space infrared telescope for astronomical observation. The telescope is designed to observe in the wavelength range of 0.5~2.1 <TEX>${\mu}m$</TEX>, when it is cooled down to 77 K. The result of the preliminary design of the support structure and support method of the mirror of a 30 cm cryogenic space infrared telescope is shown in this paper. As a Cassegrain prescription, the optical system of a 30 cm cryogenic space infrared telescope has a focal ratio of f/3.1 with a 300 mm primary mirror (M-1) and 113 mm secondary mirror (M-2). The material of the whole structure including mirrors is aluminum alloy (Al6061-T6). Flexures that can withstand random vibration were designed, and it was validated through opto-mechanical analysis that both primary and secondary mirrors, which are assembled in the support structure, meet the requirement of root mean square wavefront error < <TEX>${\lambda}/8$</TEX> for all gravity direction. Additionally, when the M-1 and flexures are assembled by bolts, the effect of thermal stress occurring from a stainless steel bolt when cooled and bolt torque on the M-1 was analyzed.

An off-axis three-mirror detection system with a large field of view is designed in order to improve the space target detection capability. The optical system is a Cook-TMA with the focal length of 127mm, the F number of 2, the field angle of 25° × 25° and the spectral range of 400-700nm. The primary mirror and the tertiary mirror of the off-axis three mirror system are all designed by free form surfaces: the primary mirror is characterized by Zernike polynomial and the tertiary mirror is described by XY polynomial. At the same time, we analyze the related characteristics of Zernike polynomial and XY polynomial. The results show that the free form surfaces have great advantages in improving the field of view and the imaging quality of the off-axis optical system. The system has high energy concentration and good imaging quality, which can capture and track the target in a wide range is suitable for wide area target monitoring.

Light scattering from residual manufacturing errors of optical surfaces has a large impact on the image quality of optical systems. Classical ray-based methods to simulate surface scattering in optical systems depend on statistical models of surface errors and neglect the wave properties of light, which prohibit the integration of statistical surface error models with beam propagation methods. Additionally, the impact of multiple scattering from different frequency components of surface errors cannot be easily modelled by existing methods. Here we analyze the impact of different frequency components of surface errors induced by diamond-turned surface grinding on image quality, and we propose a Wigner function-based approach in which light is modelled as partially coherent. In this unified model, by selecting the proper definition of light coherence, we can combine the statistical and deterministic models of surface errors, enabling efficient, simultaneous simulation of multiple scattering from high- and mid-spatial frequency (HSF and MSF, respectively) surface errors, as well as the interference and edge diffraction of light.

The supporting structure of the large-aperture primary mirror of the space camera is the key technology for the space camera. This paper presents the problem that the ball-hinge supporting structure of a certain type of primary mirror will lead to the astigmatism when the external condition varies. Based on the research on the ball-hinge supporting structure, a novel flexure supporting structure was developed and optimized with numerical analysis. Some environment experiments were conducted, and the results demonstrated that the supporting structure had large dynamic stiffness, and was better suitable for the assembly stress and thermal stress. This flexure supporting structure makes the mirror surface figure stable in a wide temperature range, and the RMS value of 0.02λ(λ=632.8 nm) when the gravitational load varies, which means the design requirement is satisfied.

Off-axis refractive system with the noticeable advantages such as high resolution, large view field and central obscuration removed, has been one of the powerful systems for space astronomical telescopes in recent years. However, misalignment errors and surface error of mirrors are significant especially in the alignment progress of off-axis reflective telescope with large aperture. Computer aided assembling (CAA) jointly provide a robust misalignment correction method to ensure the accurate alignment of telescope. In this paper, system aberration of misalignment coaxial system with two mirrors is analyzed in detail, moreover, the off-axis system is studied further, especially in the off-axis Gregorian system. And the feasibility of correction values solution about off-axis refractive system is discussed. Both the simulation and experiment results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed alignment method and high accuracy has been achieved. In the testing off-axis Gregorian system, the primary mirror is paraboloid with 1200 mm diameter, 210 mm off-axis distance, and the second mirror is ellipsoid with off-axis distance 129.0 mm, focal length 425 mm and 2125 mm, respectively. For the testing off-axis Gregorian system, the RMS value of primary mirror and second mirror are 0.021 &lambda; and 0.027 &lambda; (&lambda; = 0.6328 nm), and the testing optimization result of system wavefront aberration with RMS value is better than 0.058 &lambda; is achieved. The reverse optimization method testing can achieve high-accuracy measurement ability, which provides efficient and flexible way for the off axis refractive system from various types of elements with complex surfaces.

In order to improve the imaging quality of optical system, high precision surface of mirrors are put forward to improve their imaging quality. It makes their fabrication harder. Wavefront aberration induced by alignment is analyzed in off-axis parabolic mirror system based on the wavefront aberration theory. The surface error of off-axis parabolic mirror can be compensated by alignment so it will reduce the fabrication difficulty, shorten its period and save its cost. In the simulations of an off-axis parabolic mirror with surface error λ/40 RMS (λ=632.8 nm) ( Root Mean Squre) with ZEMAX software, the figure accuracy is under λ/40 RMS after alignment. It shows that surface error of off-axis parabolic mirrors could be compensated effectively by alignment.

Heating of the air in astronomical telescopes is known to have a deteriorating effect on the image quality. Main heat sources are the primary mirror and localized electrical components in or near the light beam. To evaluate the effects of these localized heat sources we measured the image quality deterioration at the focus of the ESO-La Silla 2.2 meter telescopes with variable amounts of heating of a dummy electronics box and of a bar simulating one of the secondary mirror spiders. The effects on the FWHM of the image profile turned out to be remarkably small. Most of the effect of the heating showed up in the removal of energy of the core into the far wings of the image profile. For a heat input of 560 Watts (resulting in an excess temperature of 60 K) the amount of energy removed amounted to 13%. This behavior can be explained by a model in which the heating destroys the wave-front over only a part of the aperture while leaving it unaffected over most of the aperture. With such a model we predict the amount of energy removed by a 500 Watt heat source in an 8 meter telescope to be only 1%.

The paper mainly proposed a novel kinematic triad-pod flexure mount for supporting a primary mirror in space. This kind of mount is constructed by three identical pods, each of them is consisted of four rotation flexures with virtual rotation center. The mount can realize great releasement of thermal stress effect on primary mirror caused by CTE (Coefficient of Thermal Expansion) mismatch between baseplate and mirror at cryogenic temperature. Based on principles of kinematic design, the paper firstly proposes a mount configuration with three pods arranged with inclined angle. Then, the structure of pod is designed in detail, and compliance model is established. A study case is employed to illustrate how to design a triad-pod mount with higher supporting stiffness and large radialcompensate compliance. Finally, simulations by FEM are implemented to verify and analyze the performances of the proposed mount. The results demonstrate that the mount can further reduce the thermal stress in primary mirror while maintaining nearly indistinctive supporting stiffness than traditional three-bipod mount. Hence, the proposed mount can provide foundation to achieve a mount with greater performances for supporting a large-aperture mirror at a wider range of temperature.

Some results are presented of a successful attempt to correct the surface manufacturing errors on the secondary mirror of the Noto 32 m radiotelescope by means of a new primary mirror, the shape of which is controlled by 244 electromechanical actuators. During a 43 GHz Jupiter observation, the technique yielded a 22% gain increase.

For meeting the requirements of the high-precision telescopes, the design of collimator is essential. The diameter of the collimator should be larger than that of the target for the using of alignment. Special supporting structures are demanded to reduce the deformation of gravity and to control the surface deformation induced by the mounting force when inspecting large-aperture primary mirrors. By using finite element analysis, a ZERODUR® mirror of a diameter of 620 mm will be analyzed to obtain the deformation induced by the supporting structures. Zernike polynomials will also be adopted to fit the optical surface and separate corresponding aberrations. Through the studies under different boundary conditions and supporting positions of the inner ring, it is concluded that the optical performance will be excellent under a strong enough supporter.

Control of the optical surface of a thin, deformable primary mirror with application to an orbiting astronomical observatory

I will report on the deformation of the Subaru Telescope primary mirror surface due to wind pressure. The 261 actuators, controlled precisely down to 0.01 N level, together with 3 fixed points maintains the optical figure of the primary mirror. The extra-force exerted by wind pressure, however, pushes the actuator pistons to cause their displacement while not affecting the fixed points. This results in an overall deformation of the primary mirror, which we measured. We first measured the difference in the actuator force of the sensors with and without wind pressure, i.e., with the dome shutter opened and closed. The force were then converted to the displacement of the 261 actuator pistons. The experiment was made under the wind speed of 5m/s with the telescope pointing toward the wind at elevations 30 and 60 degrees. The deformation pattern at EL=30 was triangular with three fixed points protruding, while that at EL=60 was saddle with the left and right pushed back. The value of deformation was ~2um. The patterns were interpreted that the wind pushes the entire mirror surface at EL=30 while it lifts the bottom part up at EL=60.