A telescope with a larger primary mirror can collect much more light and resolve objects much better than one with a smaller mirror, and so the larger version is always pursued by astronomers and astronomical technici...A telescope with a larger primary mirror can collect much more light and resolve objects much better than one with a smaller mirror, and so the larger version is always pursued by astronomers and astronomical technicians. Instead of using a monolithic primary mirror, more and more large telescopes, which are currently being planned or in construction, have adopted a segmented primary mirror design. Therefore, how to sense and phase such a primary mirror is a key issue for the future of extremely large optical/infrared telescopes. The Dispersed Fringe Sensor (DFS), or Dispersed Hartmann Sensor (DHS), is a non-contact method using broadband point light sources and it can estimate the piston by the two-directional spectrum formed by the transmissive grating's dispersion and lenslet array. Thus it can implement the combination of co-focusing by Shack-Hartmann technology and phasing by dispersed fringe sensing technologies such as the template-mapping method and the Hartmann method. We introduce the successful design, construction and alignment of our dis- persed Hartmann sensor together with its design principles and simulations. We also conduct many successful real phasing tests and phasing corrections in the visible waveband using our existing indoor segmented mirror optics platform. Finally, some conclusions are reached based on the test and correction of experimental results.展开更多
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos. 10703008 and 11073035)also partly supported by the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KJCX2-YW-T17)
文摘A telescope with a larger primary mirror can collect much more light and resolve objects much better than one with a smaller mirror, and so the larger version is always pursued by astronomers and astronomical technicians. Instead of using a monolithic primary mirror, more and more large telescopes, which are currently being planned or in construction, have adopted a segmented primary mirror design. Therefore, how to sense and phase such a primary mirror is a key issue for the future of extremely large optical/infrared telescopes. The Dispersed Fringe Sensor (DFS), or Dispersed Hartmann Sensor (DHS), is a non-contact method using broadband point light sources and it can estimate the piston by the two-directional spectrum formed by the transmissive grating's dispersion and lenslet array. Thus it can implement the combination of co-focusing by Shack-Hartmann technology and phasing by dispersed fringe sensing technologies such as the template-mapping method and the Hartmann method. We introduce the successful design, construction and alignment of our dis- persed Hartmann sensor together with its design principles and simulations. We also conduct many successful real phasing tests and phasing corrections in the visible waveband using our existing indoor segmented mirror optics platform. Finally, some conclusions are reached based on the test and correction of experimental results.