The 3,6m Indo-Belgian Devasthal Optical: the active M1 mirror support

Piérard, Maxime; Flebus, Carlo; Ninane, Nathalie

doi:10.1117/12.925946

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Furthermore, considering the science objectives related to high resolution optical spectroscopic study as well as for the seeing limited imaging at optical and NIR wavebands, it was decided to make use of modern proven active optics technology, first time for an Indian optical telescope. Opto-Mechanical design of the telescope as well as performance at AMOS are given elsewhere 10,11,12,24 . Figure 3 displays optical ray tracing diagram of both side ports and the main axial port.…”

Section: Characterization Of Devasthal Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The LZOS completed surface polishing of both M1 and M2 mirrors of the telescope in 2010 and published as-built optical quality of the mirrors 9 . The AMOS and ARIES carried out assembly, integration and first-light verification tests of the telescope at factory in year 2012 and published the results 10,11,12 . Parts of the telescope were transported by sea and by road from Belgium to India in year 2013.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The 3.6 meter Devasthal Optical Telescope: From inception to realisation

Sagar,

Kumar,

Omar

2019

Preprint

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India's largest size 3.6 meter Devasthal optical telescope (DOT) was commissioned in the year 2016, though the idea of building it germinated way back in the year 1976. This article provides research accounts as well as glimpses of its nearly four decades of journey. After a decade of site surveys, location of Devasthal in central Himalyan region of Kumaon was identified. Thereafter, a detailed site characterization was conducted and project approvals were obtained. The telescope is designed to be a technologically advanced optical astronomy instrument. It has been demonstrated to resolve a binary star having angular separation of 0. 4. After the technical activation of the telescope on March 30, 2016, it has been in regular use for testing various back-end instruments as well as for optical and near-infrared observations of celestial objects. Back-end instruments used for these observations are 4K×4K CCD imager, Faint object imager cum spectrograph and TIFR nearinfrared camera-II. A few published science results based on the observations taken with the telescope are also presented. Furthermore, the routine observations find that for a good fraction of observing time the telescope provides sky images of sub-arc-second resolution at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. This indicates that the extreme care taken in the design and construction of the telescope dome building has been rewarding since the as-built thermal mass contributes minimally so as not to degrade the natural atmospheric seeing measured at Devasthal about two decades ago during 1997-1999 using differential image motion monitor. The overall on-site performance of the telescope is found to be excellent and at par with the performance of other similar telescopes located over the globe.

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Section: Characterization Of Devasthal Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The 3.6 meter Devasthal Optical Telescope: From inception to realisation

Sagar,

Kumar,

Omar

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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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%

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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“…In open loop and for wind inside * * http://www.amos.be † † More details on the as-designed technical specifications as well as a general description of the telescope can be found elsewhere 14,[17][18][19] ‡ ‡ http://www.schott.com The telescope has an auto-guiding and wavefront sensor unit which are used to calibrate the telescope's performance with the help of a bright star picked up from the annular (31 ′ -35 ′ diameter) region of field of view. The telescope is also equipped with the active optics system (AOS) 23 which is a low frequency system that detects and corrects deformations, aberrations or any other phenomenon that degrade the image quality of the telescope. The AOS consists of a wave front sensor, 69 pneumatic active M1 support systems, M2 hexapod and the telescope control system 24 that acts as interface between each element.…”

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 3,6m Indo-Belgian Devasthal Optical: the active M1 mirror support

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

The 3.6 meter Devasthal Optical Telescope: From inception to realisation

The 3.6 meter Devasthal Optical Telescope: From inception to realisation

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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