This publication presents the characterization of a modular, active secondary mirror positioning system for a small commercial off-the-shelf Ritchey-Chrétien telescope. Relative displacements between primary and secondary mirror are measured using absolute dimensional metrology, requiring no light from the scientific application. Feedback control is implemented to compensate the measured deviations in three degrees of freedom, by means of a custom-made active mount for the secondary mirror. Tip, tilt, and piston of the secondary are controlled to their calculated ideal position with a closed-loop bandwidth of 2 Hz. The proposed system is characterized under asymmetric thermal influences, which include the small impact of gravitational disturbances, using a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor and an artificial star. The conducted experiments successfully demonstrate the applicability of the implemented active compensation approach, decreasing the RMS wavefront error by a factor of more than 7, effectively reducing the introduced optical aberrations.
KEYWORDS: Mirrors, Actuators, Telescopes, Sensors, Control systems, Active optics, Wavefront errors, Point spread functions, Astronomical telescopes, Feedback control
This publication presents an active lateral support system for the thin 1-m meniscus mirror of a Ritchey-Chrétien telescope system. The goal is to keep the mirror at its position under varying external influences, such as gravity and temperature, therefore maintaining the alignment and optical image quality. To achieve this, the lateral support consists of eight actuators, based on stepper motors with gearboxes, with local force measurement and three laser triangulation sensors to measure the mirror’s lateral position. A cascaded control structure with local force feedback in the inner loop and position feedback in the outer loop is proposed. In the outer loop, three single-input single-output PI-controllers are implemented to maintain mirror position in the three lateral degrees of freedom. The developed system is able to position the mirror with root mean square errors of 0.27 and 0.18 μm in translational directions and 5.1 μrad in the rotational direction over the operational altitude range with a slewing speed of 0.2 deg / s.
This publication presents a high-bandwidth tip-tilt compensation system for small telescopes. It is designed with respect to the requirements of applications such as free-space optical (FSO) communication and space debris imaging, where high tracking speeds up to several degrees per second are required and lead to an increased disturbance bandwidth. A quad-photo-diode (QPD) is used to measure the tip-tilt errors and compensate them in a closed-loop manner by a fast-steering mirror (FSM). Feedback controllers are designed based on a measured disturbance spectrum. Measurement results obtained from reflected sunlight of a low-Earth-orbit (LEO) object successfully demonstrate the potential of the proposed compensation system, effectively reducing the RMS tip-tilt error by up to a factor of 5.
This publication investigates the applicability of feed-forward vibration compensation for small telescope systems in one axis, based on commercial-off-the-shelf accelerometers and a fast-steering mirror (FSM). The vibrations are measured with multiple accelerometers and their influence onto the optical path is reconstructed using a highpass filtered double integrator. Consequently, the reconstructed deviations are compensated in a feed-forward control manner by the FSM. A quad-photo-diode and an artificial star are used for verification of the performance of the system. Exemplary disturbance spectra are acquired on a roof-top using a small telescope system. They are applied to the developed system in a laboratory environment, successfully demonstrating the applicability of the proposed compensation concept by reducing the RMS tip-tilt error of the azimuth axis by a factor of 2.2 in the relevant frequency range.
This paper presents the ongoing project of implementing an active optics system in an 1-meter telescope to build a lightweight, cost-effective system with high imaging quality. A systematic design methodology for meniscus mirrors based on thin plate theory and finite element analysis enables target-oriented engineering of a support system that takes the application-dependent optical mirror requirements into account. The actuators for the lateral and axial system are based on stepper motors and designed in a modular manner, adjustable for a wide range of nominal force values. The axial actuators integrate an optical force measurement to achieve a compact design. Laser triangulation sensors placed in the mirror cell measure the lateral mirror position in 3 degrees of freedom with respect to its cell, providing position data that is used in a feedback control to compensate for finite stiffness of the support structure and thermal disturbances. Tests of the lateral system’s performance show maximum displacements of 1.4 μm in both lateral directions, keeping the according wavefront RMS error below 5 nm.
This conference presentation was prepared for the Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation V conference at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2022.
This publication presents an active compensation system for the position of the secondary mirror of a small Ritchey–Chrétien telescope system. The goal is to maintain the optical imaging quality under varying gravitational and thermal influences, by compensation for the relative position deviations between the primary and secondary mirrors. An extensive analysis concerning the feasibility of such a system for a commercial off-the-shelf small telescope is performed and used as a basis for the design of the precision measurement and positioning system. The developed prototype uses dimensional metrology to capture relative position errors of the secondary mirror. A newly designed actuator with three degrees of freedom for the secondary mirror allows us to compensate for these deviations in a closed-loop control manner and ensures optimal positions of the two mirrors at all times. The support structure design requirements are reduced, allowing the utilization of more lightweight structures, as the artificial stiffness of the compensation system takes care of keeping the telescope mirrors in place. Furthermore, the measurement principle requires no light from the telescope, thus providing 100% of the collected light for the observation. The developed actuation and measurement principles are designed for simple scalability to larger representatives of small telescopes. The implemented setup is evaluated in various poses and temperature influences, successfully demonstrating that the calculated Strehl ratio is kept well above the diffraction limit of 80% for the used telescope system.
We investigate the design of an active support system for the thin primary mirror of a mid-sized telescope system used for optical satellite communication and space debris observation. To handle the complexity of this task, a general design methodology is proposed. The design for the axial and lateral support is separated into several subtasks to reduce the number of design variables in every design step. Due to the independence of mirror geometry and material, this methodology is also applicable to larger mirrors. Utilizing the proposed procedure, an active support for a 1-m meniscus mirror with 25 mm thickness and the requirement to achieve diffraction-limited optical performance is developed. The final system consists of 32 axial and 8 lateral actuators supporting the mirror with a maximal simulated RMS error of 8.8 nm and PV error of 48.0 nm when pointing to zenith. Simulations show that the obtained design ensures the required performance even under commonly occurring mirror deformations.
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