Adjustable truss for support, optical alignment, and athermalization of a Schmidt camera

Bruce Atwood; Thomas P. O'Brien

doi:10.1117/12.459965

7 March 2003 Adjustable truss for support, optical alignment, and athermalization of a Schmidt camera

Bruce Atwood, Thomas P. O'Brien

Proceedings Volume 4841, Instrument Design and Performance for Optical/Infrared Ground-based Telescopes; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.459965
Event: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 2002, Waikoloa, Hawai'i, United States

Abstract

The MODS optical spectrograph uses a de-centered Maksutov-Schmidt camera with a clear aperture of ~300mm. This large camera has two widely spaced elements, the corrector and the camera mirror, and a field flattener near the focal plane. This paper describes the truss system that supports the optical elements very rigidly, uses adjustable length links to provide a deterministic method for alignment of the optical elements, and uses material combinations which result in a camera with nearly zero focus shift due to changes in temperature. A novel joint design for terminating the truss links is described that has excellent stiffness and enhances ease of assembly and alignment.

Citation Download Citation

Bruce Atwood and Thomas P. O'Brien "Adjustable truss for support, optical alignment, and athermalization of a Schmidt camera", Proc. SPIE 4841, Instrument Design and Performance for Optical/Infrared Ground-based Telescopes, (7 March 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.459965

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