The ELT prefocal stations provide wavefront sensing to support the active control of the telescope during observations; they also include mirrors to distribute the telescope optical beam to the scientific instrument or diagnostic tool that finally uses the light collected by the ELT. Built in to the prefocal stations is a hosted metrology positioning system where metrology measuring instruments including a laser tracker and alignment telescope will be installed. This metrology will be used during coarse alignment of the ELT, to maintain the internal alignment of the prefocal stations, and to locate them with respect to their surroundings. The detailed design and application of these instruments is described here, together with a first set of test results.
Telescope mirrors are exposed to the open sky throughout the entire night and become correspondingly dusty. The dust can cement onto the surface and become difficult to remove unless the mirror is frequently cleaned off in-situ, which thus becomes a crucial method for extending the uninterrupted mirror lifetime between washing or recoating. However, providing safe access to large mirrors and the application of a gentle and quick cleaning method are challenging. We demonstrate a custom hovercraft for in-situ telescope mirror cleaning that floats above a mirror, maintaining a safe working distance to the surface of a few millimeters. The hovercraft blows off the large dust particles, while an array of spinning brushes with super-soft tapered PTFE bristles removes the very small particles, supported by electrostatic forces. The hovercraft is powered by an external blower through an air hose and guided by a crane or a movable boom. We demonstrate the thorough cleaning of large dusty mirrors and examine the cleaned samples microscopically for scratches.
For the ELT, a total of 931 M1 Segment Assemblies will be manufactured. These will be of 133 different types, 7 copies each, with different optical and mechanical properties. The manufacturing of the segment support, the glass blank and the polishing will be done by industrial partners. ESO will be responsible for the shipment of the Segment Assemblies to Chile, for the integration of the edge sensors and their electronics, and for the cleaning and coating. After performing several health- and quality-checks, the Segment Assemblies will be temporarily stored in the warehouse, before being installed at the telescope and eventually recoated around every 2 years. The telescopes and instruments for optical astronomy are usually prototypes, while a new approach is required to manage such a series production of crucial components, which differ in small but significant aspects. In this paper, we will present the processes we have developed to manage the series production of M1 Segment Assemblies for the ELT, starting from the reception of the Segment Assemblies in Chile, inspection, installation of sub-components, health-checks, storage, and installation at the telescope.
We measured the influence functions of a 9-actuator warping harness of an ELT primary mirror segment prototype using a fiber interferometer. The compact setup consists of a stiff, lightweighted aluminium plate with a similar diameter as the segment (1.25 m), holding 24 fiber-fed collimators arranged in three concentric rings. We measure simultaneously the 24 absolute distances to the mirror surface with a nominal precision of 0.5 ppm. The recorded noise level in a quiet environment was below 50 nm rms. We found good agreement between the measured influence functions and the finiteelement model by the segment support manufacturer. These measurements were performed at ESO Garching in June 2017, with the “Absolute Multiline” metrology system.
Following the scientific requirements developed by a ESO Working Group on Multi Object Spectroscopy, we present a design concept for a facility suitable for massively-multiplexed optical spectroscopy. We propose a very wide-field Cassegrain telescope optimised for fibre-fed spectroscopy. Our design provides an optical and ADC-corrected field of 2.5 degree diameter for an 11.4m primary, with a three-element corrector and ADC. A gravity invariant focus for the central 10 arc-minute field can be inserted to host a giant IFU. The telescope has an exceptionally large etendue and provides adequate image quality in the 360- 1300 nm, or in the 1300-1800 nm wavelength range. The telescope is very compact enabling an economic enclosure. We stress the importance of developing simultaneously detailed designs for the telescope and instrumentation highlighting curved detectors as key elements to optimally exploit the telescope’s potential via fast spectroscopic cameras at low cost. With this concept, more than 15000 fibres can be positioned in the focal plane with existing technology enabling a revolution in spectroscopic discovery space and follow-up of panoramic imaging surveys including LSST.
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