The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be a 25 meter optical telescope with a maximum weight of about 2300t, located on Cerro Las Campanas in Chile. The telescope will be equipped with a complex adaptive optical system as well as highly sensitive instrumentation and high performance drive and control components like direct drives and high resolution band encoders. For protection of this sensitive equipment from extreme earthquake excitations, a seismic isolation system implemented at the base of the concrete telescope pier will reduce horizontal accelerations. A second earthquake damping system, currently under development at OHB, will be installed on the GMT Mount to suppress vertical accelerations. In addition to the damping system itself, adaptations need to be made to the drive and control components to allow the damping system movements without having an impact on their functionality. A prototype of the vertical damping system will be built and dynamic testing will be performed. The presentation will provide an overview on the system development status.
The goal of the RAEGE (Red Atlantica Estaciones Geodinamicas Espaciales) project is the establishment of a Spanish-Portuguese network of geodynamical and spatial geodesy stations by the installation and operation of four fundamental geodetic / astronomical stations provided with radio telescopes located at
- Yebes, close to Madrid / Spain
- Tenerife, Canary Islands / Spain
- Santa Maria, Azores Islands / Portugal.
VLBI 2010 radiotelescopes are belonging to a new generation of radiotelescopes suitable for high precision geodetical earth observation and measurements, that shall allow to built up a high precision global reference system. The design of the radiotelescopes has been finished by MT Mechatronics in summer 2011 and currently three radiotelescopes are being manufactured. The first one is scheduled for installation in summer 2012 at Yebes Observatory close to Madrid.
The performance of single dish radio antennas or telescopes is depending on the surface accuracy of the reflectors in the
beam path and the focus/pointing errors induced by deviations/misalignment of the reflectors from a desired direction.
For multiple dish VLBI arrays an additional mechanical effect, the path length stability, is a further source of performance
degradation. For application at higher frequencies environmental influences as wind and temperature have to be
considered additionally to the usually required manufacturing and alignment accuracies. Active measurement ("metrology")
of the antenna deformations and their compensation by "active optics" (AO) respectively "flexible body compensation"
(FBC) are established methods. For the path length errors AO or FBC are up to now not established methods. The
paper describes how to handle the path length errors and the related metrology analogues to the established methods used
for surface and focus/pointing error corrections.
The Suspension Assembly is the most complex mechanical subsystem of the SOFIA telescope, responsible for suspending and positioning the telescope in the aircraft on the sky. It is a highly integrated system comprising of a vibration isolating system, a spherical hydraulic bearing, a spherical torque motor, a coarse drive and airworthiness relevant components like brakes, hard-stops etc. The components were manufactured under airworthiness standards by dedicated suppliers and integrated and commissioned in 2001/2002 at MAN Technologie in Augsburg. The paper describes the experience gotten during the manufacturing and integration process.
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Space telescopes, System integration, Gyroscopes, Observatories, Mirrors, Sensors, Control systems, Spherical lenses, Process control
System integration and testing of an airborne telescope like SOFIA is a complex process and needs to be done in three phases: 1. pre-assembling the telescope on ground; 2. integration of the telescope into the aircraft on ground; 3. in-flight commissioning and testing. Due to practical reasons (available time resources, costs) not every item can be fi-nally commissioned and tested under all environmental conditions before flight, and cooperation and joint activities between the aircraft people, the telescope people and the later users is necessary. The paper describes, how the work is shared in the three phases, what experience has been gotten so far and what is planned for the remaining activities.
One of the main requirements for the SOFIA Telescope Assembly is the achievement of a pointing stability of 0.2 arcsec. For ground based telescopes, this does not appear to be a major problem, caused by the use of heavy foundation to stabilize the telescopes to the ground. But since the SOFIA telescope is mounted into an aircraft, a high technology Suspension Assembly is required.
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