Laboratory performance testing, installation, and commissioning of the wide field upgrade tracker for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

John Good; John Booth; Mark E. Cornell; Gary J. Hill; Hanshin Lee; Richard Savage; Ronnie Leck; Hermanus Kriel; Martin Landriau

doi:10.1117/12.2057113

22 July 2014 Laboratory performance testing, installation, and commissioning of the wide field upgrade tracker for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

John Good, John Booth, Mark E. Cornell, Gary J. Hill, Hanshin Lee, Richard Savage, Ronnie Leck, Hermanus Kriel, Martin Landriau

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9145, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V; 914546 (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2057113
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2014, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Abstract

A major upgrade of the HET is in process that increases the pupil size to 10 meters and the field of view to 22’ by replacing the four-mirror corrector and prime focus instrument package to track the sidereal and non-sidereal motions of astronomical targets. To support the new payload a new Tracker, comprising 13 axes, and weighing 20 tons, was designed, built and tested at the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics, in Austin, Texas. It was then disassembled and installed on the HET. Structural modifications were performed on the upper hexagon of the telescope structure to support the net increase of 15% to the total mass of the system and maintain fundamental mode performance of 5Hz. Testing in the laboratory, as well as subsequent commissioning tests on the HET, confirm that the Tracker will position the payload to acquire and track within the specified +/-9.5um de-center, +/-15um de-focus, and +/-4.4 arc-sec tip/tilt requirement*.

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John Good, John Booth, Mark E. Cornell, Gary J. Hill, Hanshin Lee, Richard Savage, Ronnie Leck, Hermanus Kriel, and Martin Landriau "Laboratory performance testing, installation, and commissioning of the wide field upgrade tracker for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope", Proc. SPIE 9145, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, 914546 (22 July 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2057113

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