Alignment of four-mirror wide field corrector for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Chang Jin Oh; Eric H. Frater; Laura Coyle; Matt Dubin; Andrew Lowman; Chunyu Zhao; James H. Burge

doi:10.1117/12.2023427

10 September 2013 Alignment of four-mirror wide field corrector for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope

Chang Jin Oh, Eric H. Frater, Laura Coyle, Matt Dubin, Andrew Lowman, Chunyu Zhao, James H. Burge

Proceedings Volume 8844, Optical System Alignment, Tolerancing, and Verification VII; 884403 (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2023427
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2013, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) Wide Field Corrector (WFC) is a four-mirror optical system which corrects for aberrations from the 10-m segmented spherical primary mirror. The WFC mirror alignments must meet particularly tight tolerances for the system to meet performance requirements. The system uses 1-m class highly aspheric mirrors, which precludes conventional alignment methods. For the WFC system alignment a “center reference fixture” has been used as the reference for each mirror’s vertex and optical axis. The center reference fixtures have both a CGH and sphere mounted retroreflector (SMR) nests. The CGH is aligned to the mirror’s optical axis to provide a reference for mirror decenter and tilt. The vertex of each mirror is registered to the SMR nests on the center reference fixtures using a laser tracker. The spacing between the mirror vertices is measured during the system alignment using these SMR nest locations to determine the vertex locations. In this paper we present the procedures and results from creating and characterizing these center reference fixtures. As a verification of our alignment methods we also present results from their application in the WFC system alignment are also presented.

Citation Download Citation

Chang Jin Oh, Eric H. Frater, Laura Coyle, Matt Dubin, Andrew Lowman, Chunyu Zhao, and James H. Burge "Alignment of four-mirror wide field corrector for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope", Proc. SPIE 8844, Optical System Alignment, Tolerancing, and Verification VII, 884403 (10 September 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2023427

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