The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) has been responsible for the telescope structure subsystem (STR) of the Thirty Meter Telescope since 2012 and has engaged Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO) for preliminary and final design and pre-production work. There are various subsystems on the telescope, such as instruments and moving optics. Power and fluids and other services are required to operate these subsystems and the telescope drives. TMT provides the following services: Electrical Power and Bonding/Grounding, Fire Alarm, Communication and Information System (CIS) Networks, Fixed Temperature Chilled Water (FTCW) and Variable Temperature Chilled Water (VTCW), Hydrostatic Bearing System (HBS) Oil, Facility Compressed Air (FCA), Cryogenic System (CRYO), Refrigerant System (REFR), and Lighting (Operational and Emergency). The TMT defines the Telescope Utility Services (TUS) as the infrastructure which includes the cables and pipes used to deliver these utilities, the structures that support and route them, and the other components (electrical or piping components such as electrical cabinets or manifolds, lighting fixtures, fire alarms, etc.) necessary to provide these services. The design work to attach the TUS components to the STR was complicated due to the wide variety of TUS components and the multitude of mounting configurations and locations throughout the telescope structure. In order to efficiently integrate the various types of TUS components onto the STR, several practices were established and refined in the development of the TUS and STR design: 1. Definition of SOW between TUS and STR to enable concurrent TUS and STR design development 2. Simultaneous development of TUS and STR using CAD model 3. Piping and Cabling allocation within the Azimuth/Elevation Wrap 4. Route planning for cabling and piping 5. Seismic evaluation of TUS components In this paper we present the approach and the design implementation of the TUS components onto the STR.
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) is responsible for procuring the Telescope Structure System (STR) of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and engaged Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO) to perform the preliminary/final design and production readiness work since 2012. The final design of the TMT STR was deemed completed through a series of external design reviews covering structural and mechanical, controls, and auxiliary systems such as the Segment Handling System (SHS), Aerial Service Platform (ASP), Elevator (ELV), safety, and the seismic isolation system. TMT STR is currently in the production readiness phase and has already passed the Production Readiness Reviews (PRRs) for major rotating mechanical structures. In this paper we present an overview of the design progress of the TMT STR, matured through extensive studies, performance assessments, and design budgets derived from bottoms-up analyses. Additionally, we discuss prototype activities to mitigate risks to performance and manufacturability of complex designs, along with the current programmatic status of the project.
Hazard and Risk Assessment (HARA) is a critical Systems Engineering and safety activity used to ensure a safe environment for personnel and hardware. This paper discusses how TMT has tailored the Atlassian Jira tool and third-party embedded app, SoftComply Risk Manager, to provide a collaborative environment with subsystem teams in order to a develop a comprehensive HARA, starting with hazard identification and assessment and continuing through reassessment after mitigation. The paper shows how the tool was initially created for the Telescope Structure (STR) to facilitate collaboration with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO), and has since expanded to other subsystems as well as to the system-level, capturing intersystem hazards. From the system and subsystem HARAs, risk reduction actions are identified and if safety functions are used as a mitigation, they are described in terms of functional safety actions and associated SIL ratings. These safety functions are then traced to safety requirements imposed on the Observatory Safety System or on subsystems. This overall HARA process provides TMT with a comprehensive overview of all Observatory hazards and the status of the development and implementation of their mitigations thanks to the Jira and Risk Manager dashboards, risk matrix, and risk table views.
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) has had the responsibility for the Telescope Structure System (STR) of Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and engaged Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO) to take over the preliminary/final design and pre-production work since 2012. TMT defines that STR shall be designed to withstand earthquakes up to the levels of the 1000-years annual return period as keeping accelerations at the mirror/instrumental interface points below the specified thresholds. In this paper, we present the Seismic Isolation System (SIS) of TMT STR, as focusing on (1) the design to achieve compatibility of two conflicting performances that are the rigid connection to the ground during normal observations and flexible movement during seismic to suppress the seismic energy, (2) prototype results of the seismic isolation system, and (3) compliance status of the seismic requirements which is evaluated by time history analysis using the Finite Element Method (FEM) model of TMT STR.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is expected to reveal the birth of galaxies, planetary surfaces and even the atmospheric composition of exoplanets. The TMT is an optical infrared reflecting telescope that uses very large hydrostatic bearings in the drive units. High precision is required for the sliding surface of the hydrostatic bearing. In the case of TMT, the radius of the hydrostatic bearing of the elevation journal is about 10 meters and it cannot be manufactured as an integral structure, so has a segmented structure. The size of each member of the segmented structure exceeds 10 meters. When high precision machining of about 30 micrometers is performed on the large structure exceeding 10 meters, it may take several days for a single process, which is greatly affected by changes in ambient temperature. Changes in ambient temperature not only cause thermal expansion and contraction of the workpiece, but also cause deformation of the machine tool. There are only a few large machine tools that can process parts over 10 meters in size. We constructed a temperaturecontrolled chamber that covers the large machine tool to prevent ambient temperature fluctuations. We compared the accuracy of machining in a room temperature (variable temperature) environment and machining in a constant temperature environment. This result demonstrates that machining errors can be suppressed in a constant temperature environment. In addition, this paper also shows the results of combining machining and the use of abrasive paper to finish the sliding surface, which improved the surface roughness without deforming the shape of the machined sliding surface. By using these improved machining methods, we were able to establish a precision machining method for large structures.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) consists of 66 antennas with the aperture equivalent to a 91-m diameter antenna. The Green Bank Telescope (GBT) is the world’s largest, 100-m diameter telescope in the wavelength range of 3 mm to 30 cm. The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) will be the world´s largest, 50-m diameter, steerable millimeter-wavelength telescope. The Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT) will be the world’s largest, 25-m diameter, submillimeter-wavelength telescope. We will investigate advantages and disadvantages of both the aperture synthesis telescope and the large single-dish telescope taking the cost effectiveness into consideration, and will propose the design of antenna structure for a future telescope project at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.
We report the development of the new 4-beam, 2-polarization, 2-sideband, 100 GHz band SIS receiver "FOREST" (FOur beam REceiver System on the 45-m Telescope) and the results from commissioning and observations on the Nobeyama 45-m Telescope operated by Nobeyama Radio Observatory, a branch of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. FOREST aims to add new capabilities of large-area mapping and simultaneous multi-line observation at 80 { 116 GHz band to the Nobeyama 45-m Telescope, which is one of the largest millimeter radio telescopes in the world. The configuration of the four beams is a quadrate of 2 x 2 with the separation between adjacent beams of 50". Beam size of each beam is ~ 15" at 115 GHz. Receiver noise temperature is as low as that of ALMA Band 3 receivers, so that mapping speed is more than four times as high as that of the other 100 GHz band receivers on the 45-m Telescope. The IF bandwidth is 8 GHz (4 { 12 GHz) realizing simultaneous 12CO(J = 1-0), 13CO(J = 1-0), and C18O(J = 1-0) observations. Cooled components inside of cryostat are modularized per beam. IF signals from the cryostat are processed by the room temperature IF system, and then passed to spectrometers. We have installed the FOREST receiver into the Nobeyama 45-m Telescope, evaluated its performance, and made large area mapping observations. These demonstrate the excellent performance of the FOREST receiver and the Nobeyama 45-m Telescope.
Lars-Åke Nyman, Pierre Cox, Stuartt Corder, Masao Saito, Andreas Lundgren, Baltasar Vila-Vilaro, Daniel Espada, Eric Villard, Emilio Barrios, Paola Andreani, John Hibbard, Ken'ichi Tatematsu
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is a new interferometer operated on Llano de Chajnantor at 5050 m altitude in the Chilean Andes. It consists of 66 antennas operating in the mm/submm windows between 3 and 0.3 mm wavelength. Early science observations using 16 antennas (known as Cycle 0) started in parallel with construction in September 2011, in order to provide useful results to the astronomy community and to facilitate the ongoing characterization of its system. ALMA is currently in Cycle 2 of early science observations. This presentation describes the development and progress of ALMA observations and data processing from Cycle 0 towards full operations.
A holography receiver has been developed for both ALMA antennas (12m and 7m). ALMA had no holography receivers for the 7m antenna. It required high-accuracy, despite small size and light weight for easy installation with a limited working area. The ALMA antennas are also used for daytime observations. The antenna deformation strongly depends on ambient temperature and sun exposure. It is essential to know the daytime antenna deformation for success of the ALMA observation. The purpose of the project is to provide a holography receiver that can measure the diurnal and the seasonal antenna deformation.
Pointing performance of a radio telescope antenna is important in radio astronomical observations to obtain accurate intensity of a target source. The pointing errors of the ALMA ACA antenna are required to be better than 0.6 arcsec rss, which corresponds to 1/10 and 1/20 of the field of view of the ALMA ACA 12-m and 7-m antenna at 950 GHz, respectively. The pointing verification measurements of the ACA antenna were performed using an Optical pointing telescope (OPT) mounted on the antenna backup structure at the ALMA Operations Site Facility at 2900m above the sea level. Pointing errors of these OPT measurements contain three different origins; originated from antenna, originated of atmosphere (optical seeing), and originated of OPT itself. In order to estimate pointing errors of the antenna origin, we need to subtract the components of optical seeing and OPT itself accurately, while we need to add components that cannot be measured in the OPT measurements. The ACA antenna verification test report demonstrated that all the ACA 7-m antenna meets pointing specification of ALMA. However, about one-third of datasets, values of estimated optical seeing is larger than measured pointing errors. We re-examined a procedure to estimate optical seeing, by investigating the property of optical seeing from the high-sampling OPT pointing measurements of long tracking a bright star for 15 minutes. Particularly, we examined the relation between optical seeing and sampling rate derived from Kolmogorov PSD. Our analysis indicated that the optical seeing at ALMA site may have been overestimated in the verification test. We present a new relation between optical seeing and sampling rate proportional to average wind velocity during measurement. We used this new relation to derive the optical seeing and as a result the number of datasets becomes half in which the optical seeing is larger than measured pointing errors. As a result, we successfully develop a new verification method of optical seeing that has high reliability.
KEYWORDS: Phase measurement, Signal generators, Signal detection, Phase shift keying, Signal processing, Digital filtering, Polarization, Sensors, Oscillators, Fiber Bragg gratings
In signal transmission through optical fiber, cable length delay fluctuation accompanied by chromatic and
polarization-mode dispersion affects the coherence of distributed signals. To maintain signal coherence, it is
very important to generate very-high-frequency signals with minimum phase noise and transmission loss. In a
photonic local signal generation/distribution system with a microwave-photonic signal generator and a real-time
microwave-photonic signal phase stabilizer that we developed as an alternative photonic LO system for ALMA
(Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array), signals are transmitted in the form of frequency difference
between two coherent light waves, effectively maintaining the coherence of distributed reference signals. Through
the development of the real-time phase stabilizer, we discovered that the system would be further improved with
the introduction of a post-processing scheme phase stabilizer and confirmed its effectiveness by experiments.
The ACA (Atacama Compact Array) system is an important element of ALMA and consists of four ACA 12-m antennas
and twelve ACA 7-m antennas. The ACA system aims to acquire the total power data with four 12-m antennas and the
short baseline interferometer data with 7-m antennas. The ACA system also increases reliability of the interferometer
maps of astronomical sources larger than the field view of the 12-m antenna. The science performance of these antennas
has been extensively verified at OSF (operation support facility) at an elevation of 2900 m in Atacama desert in northern
Chile since 2007. The pointing performance has been verified with a dedicated optical pointing telescope, the servo
performance is tested with angle encoders, and the surface accuracy has been measured with a radio holography method.
Both ACA 12-m antennas and 7-m antennas have been successfully demonstrated to meet the very stringent ALMA
specifications.
ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is a revolutionary radio telescope and its early scientific
operation has just started. It is expected that ALMA will resolve several cosmic questions and will give us a new cosmic
view. Our passion for astronomy naturally goes beyond ALMA because we believe that the 21st-century astronomy
should pursue the new scientific frontier. In this conference, we propose a project of the future radio telescope to search
for habitable planets and finally detect 2nd Earth as a migratable planet. Detection of 2nd Earth is one of the ultimate
dreams not only for astronomers but also for every human being.
To directly detect 2nd Earth, we have to carefully design the sensitivity and angular resolution of the telescope by
conducting trade-off analysis between the confusion limit and the minimum detectable temperature. The result of the
sensitivity analysis is derived assuming an array that has sixty-four (64) 50-m antennas with 25-;μm surface accuracy
mainly located within the area of 300 km (up to 3000 km), dual-polarization SSB receivers with the best noise
temperature performance achieved by ALMA or better, and IF bandwidth of 128 or 256 GHz.. We temporarily name this
telescope "Very Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (VLMSA)". Since this sensitivity is extremely high, we can have
a lot of chances to study the galaxy, star formation, cosmology and of course the new scientific frontier.
Two types of field measurements on the Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment 10-m antenna have been made to
diagnose antenna oscillations in strong wind gusts and to reduce pointing errors due to static/quasi-static wind loadings.
The measurements with seismic accelerometers on the reflector have been compared with those from axis angle encoders.
Our results have confirmed that the dominant wind effects are at low frequencies, and have found that twist and pitching
motion of yoke arms are the dominant source of pointing jitters and decrease with frequency along the Kolmogorov
slope of -5/3. In the range from about 1 to 10 Hz, the servo-loop excites and dominates pointing error oscillations. For
azimuth oscillations, the frontal wind has the largest effects, compared with side- or tail-wind. To improve pointing
performance against static/quasi-static wind effects, we have implemented and tested an auxiliary auto-pointingcorrection
system with a lookup table compiled from all-sky pointing measurements under strong winds, invoking the
Taylor's "frozen turbulence" hypothesis. We have successfully demonstrated that use of upwind data from a nearby
anemometer helps to reduce the pointing errors of static wind effects from 2.4 " rms (correction OFF) to 1.2 " rms
(correction ON) under a mean wind speed of 9.3 m s-1.
We report the measurement results and compensation of the antenna elevation angle dependences of the Submillimeter
Array (SMA) antenna characteristics. Without optimizing the subreflector (focus) positions as a
function of the antenna elevation angle, antenna beam patterns show lopsided sidelobes, and antenna efficiencies
show degradations. The sidelobe level increases and the antenna efficiencies decrease about 1% and a few %,
respectively, for every 10° change in the elevation angle at the measured frequency of 237 GHz. We therefore
obtained the optimized subreflector positions for X (azimuth), Y (elevation), and Z (radio optics) focus axes at
various elevation angles for all the eight SMA antennas. The X axis position does not depend on the elevation
angle. The Y and Z axes positions depend on the elevation angles, and are well fitted with a simple function for
each axis with including a gravity term (cosine and sine of elevation, respectively). In the optimized subreflector
positions, the antenna beam patterns show low level symmetric sidelobe of at most a few%, and the antenna
efficiencies stay constant at any antenna elevation angles. Using one set of fitted functions for all antennas,
the SMA is now operating with real-time focusing, and showing constant antenna characteristics at any given
elevation angle.
Periodic vortex shedding from a 12-m parabola antenna has been found in the wind of 9 m s-1 and an attack angle of 26
degrees. The measurements have been made at the NRAO VLA site. The periodic yaw motion of an elevation axis has
been detected with linear gauges mounted on a reference structure that was built in each side of the yoke. It has also been
observed in the angle difference of two encoders installed at both ends of the elevation axis. The frequency of yaw
motion was 0.15 Hz. The same periodicities have been found in both the wind direction and wind velocity measured with
an ultrasonic anemometer in the wake downstream of the antenna. Such periodicities have been seen in neither common
displacement of the bearing housings nor rotation of the elevation axis. The Reynolds number of the flow was 6 x 106
(hypercritical), suggesting the vortex shedding be periodic, which is consistent with our observations. The Strouhal
number of parabola has been found to be 0.19 that is comparable to those of cylinder, inverse triangle, and other similar
geometric shapes. The coefficient for oscillatory lateral force exerted on the antenna by shedding vortices has been
estimated to be about 1.
The holography program to measure and set the surfaces of the antennas of the Submillmeter Array (SMA) has been very successful, with the best antenna meeting the stringent 12 μm rms specification. The surfaces of the 6-meter diameter antennas
of the 8 element array have been set to accuracies of 12-25 μm, and are under constant improvement. This allows efficient operation in the 660 GHz band, currently the highest frequency band of observations. The system used to make routine near-field holographic measurements at 232.4 GHz -- the primary method of obtaining surface error maps -- is now fully integrated into the SMA. The measurements are carried out remotely from Cambridge. A sequence of upto 4 rounds of measurements and adjustments is needed to achieve the design specification of 12 μm rms starting typically from 65 μm rms. The last sets of adjustments incorporate corrections for panel flexures, allowed by the 4 points of adjustment for most of the panels, and the high spatial resolution (~ 8 cm) of the surface error maps. Repeat measurements indicate a surface stability time scale of ~ 1 year including antenna transport between stations. Celestial holography to characterize gravitational deformations and careful efficiency measurements to validate the holographic measurements are in progress.
The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan has constructed a prototype 12-m antenna of the Atacama Compact Array to evaluate its performance at the ALMA Test Facility in the NRAO VLA observatory in New Mexico, the United States. The antenna has a CFRP tube backup structure (BUS) with CFRP boards to support 205 machined Aluminum
surface panels. Their accuracies were measured to be 5.9 m rms on average. A chemical treatment technique of the surface panels has successfully applied to scatter the solar radiation, which resulted in a subreflector temperature increase of about 25 degrees relative to ambient temperature during direct solar observations. Holography measurements and panel adjustments led to a final surface accuracy of 20 m rms, (weighted by 12dB edge taper), after three rounds of the panel adjustments. Based on a long term temperature monitoring of the BUS and thermal deformation FEM calculation, the BUS thermal deformation was estimated to be less than 3.1 m rms. We have employed gear drive mechanism both for a fast position switching capability and for smooth drive at low velocities. Servo errors measured with angle encoders were found to be less than 0.1 arcseconds rms at rotational velocities below 0.1 degrees s-1 and to increase to 0.7 arcseconds rms at the maximum speed of the 'on-the-fly' scan as a single dish, 0.5 deg s-1 induced by the irregularity of individual gear tooth profiles. Simultaneous measurements of the
antenna motion with the angle encoders and seismic accelerometers mounted at the primary reflector mirror edges and at the subreflector showed the same amplitude and phase of oscillation, indicating that they are rigid, suggesting that it is possible to estimate where the antenna is actually pointing from the encoder readout. Continuous tracking measurements of Polaris during day and night have revealed a large pointing drift due to thermal distortion of the yoke structure. We have applied retrospective thermal corrections to tracking data for two hours, with a preliminary thermal deformation model of the yoke, and have found the tracking accuracy improved to be 0.1 - 0.3 arcseconds rms for a 15-munites period. The whole sky absolute pointing error under no wind and during night was measured to be 1.17 arcseconds rms. We need to make both an elaborated modeling of thermal deformation of the structure and systematic searches for
significant correlation among pointing errors and metrology sensor outputs to achieve the stable tracking performance requested by ALMA.
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