Design of a cophasing system for a space interferometer

Massimo Cecconi; Roberto Ragazzoni; Enrico Marchetti

doi:10.1117/12.185285

13 September 1994 Design of a cophasing system for a space interferometer

Massimo Cecconi, Roberto Ragazzoni, Enrico Marchetti

Proceedings Volume 2209, Space Optics 1994: Earth Observation and Astronomy; (1994) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.185285
Event: Space Optics '94, 1994, Garmisch, Germany

Abstract

The active real-time cophasing of an interferometer, that is, the fulfillment of the condition (Delta) (OPD) >> (lambda) (OPD is the Optical Path Difference between every pair of light beams, each coming from every telescope of the array is a crucial requirement for high resolution and long exposure image formation. So the optical concept is a possible design of a Cophasing System (CS hereafter) for a space interferometer, e.g. the Multimirror Ultraviolet Solar Telescope (MUST), will be presented. A collimator and a pair of achromatic wedges are two of its components; the former has the target to collimate light beams which enter in the CS preserving the instrumental errors due to aberrations much less than (lambda) in the Optical Path Length (OPL) of the light beams; the latter allows to choose any region of the Field of View (FoV) of the beams by their simple rotation (two degree of freedom correspond to a FoV point) in order to have high contrast features used in telescopes pre- alignment subsystem included in the CS. Ray tracing results on these optical components will be show. Their tolerance analysis will also be discussed. A mechanical approach for each wedge rotation will be shown together with a preliminary CAD arrangement of the subsystem in a cylindrical package of diameter approximately equals 300 mm and approximately equals 100 mm height.

Citation Download Citation

Massimo Cecconi, Roberto Ragazzoni, and Enrico Marchetti "Design of a cophasing system for a space interferometer", Proc. SPIE 2209, Space Optics 1994: Earth Observation and Astronomy, (13 September 1994); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.185285

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