Related papers: TMT Science and Instruments
Optics is an important subfield of physics required for instrument design and used in a variety of other disciplines, including materials science, physics, and life sciences such as developmental biology and cell biology. It is important to…
The U.S. Naval Observatory Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) project aims at a highly accurate (5 mas), ground-based, all-sky survey. Requirements are presented for the optics and telescope for this 0.85 m aperture, 4.5 degree diameter…
Full sky coverage with 30-40 meter-class telescopes is essential to answer fundamental questions in Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Physics, such as the composition of the Universe and the formation of the first stars and supermassive black…
A Cassegrain mounted adaptive optics instrument presents unique challenges for opto-mechanical design. The flexure and temperature tolerances for stability are tighter than those of seeing limited instruments. This criteria requires…
There are numerous advantages to exploiting diffraction-limited instrumentation at astronomical observatories, which include smaller footprints, less mechanical and thermal instabilities and high levels of performance. To realize such…
In this paper we present a novel telescope composed exclusively of thin, flat optical elements, each being a hot-pressed multi-layered structure combining the properties of a lens, its anti-reflection coating and frequency selection or…
WST - Widefield Spectroscopic Telescope: We summarise the design challenges of instrumentation for a proposed 12m class Telescope that aims to provide a large (>2.5 square degree) field of view and enable simultaneous Multi-object (> 20,000…
The Infra-Red Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) is one of the three first light instruments for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and is the only one to directly sample the diffraction limit. The instrument consists of a parallel imager and…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is optimized for observations in the near and mid infrared and will provide essential observations for targets that cannot be conducted from the ground or other missions during its lifetime. The state…
Active optics is defined as the control of the shape and the alignment of the components of an optical system at low temporal frequencies. For modern large telescopes with flexible monolithic or segmented primary mirrors and also flexible…
Research activities during the last decade have shown the strong potential of photonic devices to greatly simplify ground based and space borne astronomical instruments and to improve their performance. We focus specifically on the…
A full-field transmission hard X-ray microscope (TXM) with 30nm resolution was designed and its prototype was constructed. The TXM relies on a compact, high stiffness, low heat dissipation and low vibration design philosophy and utilizes…
I very briefly describe the latest generation near infrared (1-2.5 micron) instruments which are available on, or under development for `large' (D>=3.5 m) telescopes. Most of the imagers under construction are limited to relatively small…
A 30 m class optical/near-IR telescope in the Northern Hemisphere, equipped for diffraction-limited imaging and high-resolution, multi-object spectroscopy of faint stars, would enable a transformational investigation of the formation and…
Refractive optics in astronomical instruments are potentially sensitive to temperature gradients and temperature transients. This sensitivity arises from thermally dependent refractive indices, lens spacings, and lens dimensions. We have…
We propose and experimentally demonstrate the Transformable Reflective Telescope (TRT) Kit for educational purposes and for performing various optical tests with a single kit. The TRT Kit is a portable optical bench setup suitable for…
We review the present status of liquid mirror telescopes. Interferometric tests of liquid mirrors (the largest one having a diameter of 2.5 meters ) show excellent optical qualities. The basic technology is now sufficiently reliable that it…
Recently, Su et al. (2016) propose a telescope design, referred as the "SYZ" design, for Chinese new project of a 12m optical-infrared telescope. The SYZ telescope design consists of three aspheric mirrors with non-zero power, including a…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, infrared space telescope that has recently started its science program which will enable breakthroughs in astrophysics and planetary science. Notably, JWST will provide the very first…
The past fifty years have been an epoch of impressive progress in the field of astronomical technology. Practically all the technical tools, which we use today, have been developed during that time span. While the first half of this period…