The KMTNet telescope Project, sponsored by The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), is fabricating
three wide-field equatorial mount telescopes of 1.6 meter aperture to conduct continuous observations of the Galactic
bulge region to search for extra-solar planets. Southern latitude sites secured for these telescopes are SAAO (South
Africa), CTIO (Chile), and SSO (Australia). A prime-focus configuration, along with a four-lens corrector achieves the
2.8 degree diagonal FOV. The basic mechanical design utilizes a scaled-up version of the successful 2MASS Telescopes
built by the authors in the late 1990's. Scaling up of components has presented challenges requiring several iterations of
the detailed mechanical analysis as well as the optical analysis due to interaction with mounting assemblies for the
optical components. A flexure-style focus mechanism, driven by three precision actuators, moves the entire headring
assembly and provides real-time focus capability, and active primary mirror cooling is implemented for the Zerodur
primary. KMTNet engineering specifications are met with the current design, which uses Comsoft's Legacy PCTCS for
control. A complete operational telescope and enclosure are scheduled for installation in Tucson, AZ prior to shipping
the first hardware to CTIO in order to verify tracking, optical characteristics at various attitudes, and overall observatory
functionality. The cameras, being fabricated by The Ohio State University Department of Astronomy, Imaging Sciences
Laboratory (ISL), are proceeding in parallel with the telescope fabrication, and that interface is now fixed. Specifics of
the mechanical and optical design are presented, along with the current fabrication progress and testing protocols.
TBR Construction and Engineering (TBR) has under development for the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI), a project to provide three 1.6 meter optical telescopes observatories in three southern countries: Chile, South Africa, and Australia. The contracting team has chosen to develop a full scale prototype of the observatory. This will become a functional assembly and testing facility for all three project telescopes in Tucson, Arizona. This prototyping concept is meant to allow the optics team to make changes to the observatory as needed for the scientific mission while minimizing the expense of making changes in remote countries.
The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) are under development three 1.6m optical telescopes for the
Korea Micro-lensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) project. These will be installed at three southern observatories in
Chile, South Africa, and Australia by middle 2014 to monitor dense star fields like the Galactic bulge and Large
Magellanic Cloud. The primary scientific goal of the project is to discover numerous extra-solar planets using the
gravitational micro-lensing technique. We have completed the final design of the telescope. The most critical design
issue was wide-field optics. The project science requires the Delivered Image Quality (DIQ) of less than 1.0 arcsec
FWHM within 1.2 degree radius FOV, under atmospheric seeing of 0.75 arcsec. We chose the prime-focus configuration
and realized the DIQ requirement by using a purely parabolic primary mirror and four corrector lenses with all spherical
surfaces. We present design results of the wide-field optics, the primary mirror coating and support, and the focus system
with three linear actuators on the head ring.
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