The visible emission line coronagraph (VELC) on board the Aditya-L1 mission is an internally occulted reflective coronagraph. It is capable of simultaneous observations of the solar corona in imaging, spectroscopic, and spectropolarimetric modes very close to the solar limb, to 1.05 R ⊙ (R ⊙ – solar radius). Primary mirror (M1) of the VELC receives the light from both the solar disk and the corona up to 3 R ⊙ . In the VELC, occultation happens at the focus of the M1. Secondary mirror (M2) with a central hole size equal to 1.05 R ⊙ is mounted at the focal plane of M1 and serves the purpose of an internal occulter. To meet the proposed science goals of the payload, M1 surface should be super polished with good imaging characteristics. This results in stringent requirements of the surface figure and microroughness on the mirror surface. M1 is an off-axis parabola, so achieving the demanding requirements is quite challenging. At the same time, testing of M1 after development is crucial for evaluating its performance. This paper provides the details of the optical metrology tests carried out on M1 along with the results obtained and their implications on the performance of the VELC.
Conventional two-mirror optical telescope designs are well known. An attempt to improve the performance of a two-mirror telescopic system using freeform surface is reported. Four variants of the optical design that use symmetric and off-axis freeform surfaces for achieving superior performances in the spectral range from 400 to 900 nm are proposed. These designs are compared with the conventional Ritchey–Chretien and equivalent two-mirror off-axis telescope designs with rotationally symmetric surfaces. The optical design with freeform surfaces shows marked improvements compared with its counterpart comprising of conics and higher order aspherics. The incorporation of freeform surfaces is obtained by an overlay of fringe Zernike polynomial either on the base sphere or on the conic itself, which is used as a surface descriptor in the envisaged designs. This approach aids in correction of asymmetrical aberrations and also extends the performances to a wider field, which is quite advantageous in the case of off-axis (de-centered and tilted) optical systems.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.