The 3,6 m Indo-Belgian Devasthal Optical Telescope: the hydrostatic azimuth bearing

Ville, Jonathan de; Piérard, Maxime; Bastin, Christian

doi:10.1117/12.925943

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…• The safety loop and the thermal protections; • Auxiliary subsystems: moving counterweights, M1 cover, Azimuth cable wrap, Azimuth hydrostatic bearing (see [4]), Side port folding mirror, calibration optical fiber, compressed air system; •…”

Section: The Plcmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The 3,6 m optical telescope for ARIES: the control system

Gabriel¹,

Bastin²,

Piérard³

2012

SPIE Proceedings

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AMOS SA has been awarded of the contract for the design, manufacturing, assembly, tests and on site installation (Nainital, Devasthal site at 2540 mm altitude) of the 3,6 m Optical Telescope for ARIES (Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences), Nainital (India). This paper describes the architecture deployed for the whole telescope control. It contains, in others, the Telescope Control System (TCS), the Active Optic System (AOS) and the Auto Guiding Unit (AGU). The TCS generates the telescope axes trajectory from the celestial coordinates selected by the operator and drives the main axes. The AOS generates the force set points for each M1 actuator and the position set point of the M2 hexapod from the data given by a wave front sensor. The AGU sends the main axes corrections from the movement of the guide star on the guiding CCD. The modules shall communicate between them to optimize the telescope behavior and with the Observatory Control System (OCS) for data reporting and synchronization with the instrument.

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Section: The Plcmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The telescope weighting 125 tons, the rotation around the azimuth axis is performed thanks to a hydrostatic track [4] and a motorized cable wrap. The field rotation of the Cassegrain focus is made through a mechanical Rotator system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The 3,6 m optical telescope for ARIES: the control system

Gabriel¹,

Bastin²,

Piérard³

2012

SPIE Proceedings

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“…Weight of such thin mirrors (thickness to diameter ratio 1:400) reduces significantly in comparison to primary mirrors having thickness to diameter ratio 1:6 used earlier in order to avoid flexure against gravity while telescopes are pointed towards different direction in the sky. It is mainly because of this reason, that India's largest sized 3.6 m DOT, the first modern technology optical and near-IR telescope of the country, uses the latest technological developments taken in this field [22,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. Construction of DOT can therefore provide valuable technological knowhow for the young engineers and scientists of the country and go a long way in developing 8-10 meter sized Indian optical and near-IR telescope.…”

Section: Impact Of Technological Development On Modern Optical and Nementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, centers of stars have more than million degree Kelvin temperature at an extremely large gravitational pressure (~ 250 billion times of the gravity on the Earth); matter density has a wide range from a trillion g/cm 3 in the case of neutron stars to trillionth part of a g/cm 3 in the case of interstellar matter. Mass of the stars ranges from 0.1 to 100 M sun (=2x10 33 g) while that of galaxies are ~10 12 -10 13 M sun . Therefore, their scientific studies, called Astrophysics, provide us with a laboratory in which physical laws and theories are applied, tested and refined at temperatures, pressures and scales otherwise unattainable.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Global Prospective of the Indian Optical and Near-Infrared Observational Facilities in the Field of Astronomy and Astrophysics: A Review

Sagar

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., India, Sect. A Phys. Sci.

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A review of modernization and growth of ground based optical and near-infrared astrophysical observational facilities in the globe attributed to the recent technological developments in opto-mechanical, electronics and computer science areas is presented. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and speckle and adaptive ground based imaging have obtained images better than 0.1 arc sec angular resolution bringing the celestial objects closer to us at least by a factor of 10 during the last two decades. From the light gathering point of view, building of large size (> 5meter aperture) ground based optical and near-infrared telescopes based on latest technology have become economical in recent years. Consequently, in the world, a few 8-10 meter size ground-based optical and near-infrared telescopes are being used for observations of the celestial objects, three 25-40 meter size are under design stage and making of a ~ 100 meter size telescope is under planning stage. In India, the largest sized optical and near-infrared telescope is the modern 3.6-meter located at Devasthal, Nainital. However, the existing Indian moderate size telescopes equipped with modern backend instruments have global importance due to their geographical location. Recently, the Government of India approved India's participation in the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project.

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“…The azimuth, altitude and other bearings of the telescope uses latest technology available in the market 22 . The tracking performance of the telescope is better than 0.…”

Section: Telescopementioning

confidence: 99%

New optical telescope projects at Devasthal Observatory

et al. 2012

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Devasthal, located in the Kumaun region of Himalayas is emerging as one of the best optical astronomy site in the continent. The minimum recorded ground level atmospheric seeing at the site is 0.6 arcsec with median value at 1.1 arcsec. Currently, a 1.3-m fast (f/4) wide field-of-view (66 arcmin) optical telescope is operating at the site. In near future, a 4-m liquid mirror telescope in collaboration with Belgium and Canada, and a 3.6-m optical telescope in collaboration with Belgium are expected to be installed in 2013. The telescopes will be operated by Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences. The first instruments on the 3.6-m telescope will be in-house designed and assembled faint object spectrograph and camera. The second generation instruments will be including a large field-of-view optical imager, high resolution optical spectrograph, integral field unit and an optical near-infrared spectrograph. The 1.3-m telescope is primarily used for wide field photometry imaging while the liquid mirror telescope will see a time bound operation to image half a degree wide strip in the galactic plane. There will be an aluminizing plant at the site to coat mirrors of sizes up to 3.7 m. The Devasthal Observatory and its geographical importance in between major astronomical observatories makes it important for time critical observations requiring continuous monitoring of variable and transient objects from ground based observatories. The site characteristics, its expansions plans and first results from the existing telescope are presented.Comment: Invited paper, 12 pages, SPIE Conference, July 201

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The 3,6 m Indo-Belgian Devasthal Optical Telescope: the hydrostatic azimuth bearing

Cited by 5 publications

References 2 publications

The 3,6 m optical telescope for ARIES: the control system

The 3,6 m optical telescope for ARIES: the control system

A Global Prospective of the Indian Optical and Near-Infrared Observational Facilities in the Field of Astronomy and Astrophysics: A Review

New optical telescope projects at Devasthal Observatory

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