The Multi-Application Solar Telescope (MAST) is a 50 cm diameter class telescope to be installed by AMOS on the
Udaipur Solar Observatory's Island on the Lake Fatehsagar in India. Despite its limited size, the telescope is expected to
be competitive with respect to worldwide large and costly projects thanks to its versatility regarding science goals and
due to its demanding optomechanical and thermal specification. This paper describes the latest, on-going and
forthcoming activities, including factory assembly, integration and testing, followed by on-site installation and
commissioning activities. Emphasis is put on the highly demanding thermal control of the telescope, showing
development and results for the specific techniques employed on this purpose. Other key features also depicted are the
unusual tracking and alignment control solutions on such a specific science target like the Sun.
KEYWORDS: Mirrors, Telescopes, Optical instrument design, Off axis mirrors, Interfaces, Solar telescopes, Control systems design, Space telescopes, Observatories, Silicon carbide
The Multi-Application Solar Telescope (MAST) is a 50 cm diameter class telescope to be installed on the Udaipur Solar
Observatory's Island on the Lake Fatehsagar in Udaipur, India. It is dedicated to solar observation. The telescope is
designed, manufactured, assembled and installed on-site by the belgian company AMOS SA for the Udaipur Solar
Observatory (USO), an academic division of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in India. Despite its limited size,
the telescope is expected to be competitive with respect to worldwide large and costly projects thanks to its versatility
regarding science goals and also thanks to its demanding optomechanical and thermal specification. This paper describes
the optomechanical and thermal design of this telescope and presents solutions adopted by AMOS to meet the specific
requirements. The optical configuration of the telescope is based on an afocal off-axis gregorian combination integrated
on an Alt.-Az. mechanical mount, with a suite of flat folding mirrors to provide the required stationary collimated beam.
An image stabilization system has been developed and demonstrated for solar observations in the visible wave-length at Udaipur Solar Observatory (USO) with a 15 cm Coudé-refractor. The softwa4re and hardware components of the system are similar to that of the low cost solar adaptive optics system developed for the 1.5 m McMath-Pierce solar telescope at Kitt Peak observatory for solar observations in the infrared. The first results presented. The system has a closed loop correction bandwidth in the range of 70 to 100 Hz. The root mean by a factor of 10 to 20. The software developes and key issues concerning optimum system performance have been addressed.
A Multi-Application Solar Telescope (MAST) is proposed to be installed at the Udaipur Solar Observatory (USO)
in India to monitor the Sun in optical and near infra-red wavelengths. The median value of the Fried's parameter
at this site is 4 cm. USO is in the process of building an Adaptive optics (AO) system in order to have diffraction
limited performance of the MAST under this moderate seeing condition. AO helps in achieving high-resolution
imaging by compensating the atmospheric turbulence in real-time. We have performed simulations to evaluate
the performance of AO for various seeing conditions. It was concluded that with the present availability of AO
system components, a 55 cm aperture telescope would yield optimum performance with AO, in combination with
post-processing techniques like speckle imaging and phase diversity. At present, we are developing a proto-type
AO system at USO to demonstrate its performance with a 15 cm Coude´ refracting telescope as a preparation for
the main AO system to be deployed on the MAST. The prototype AO system is being realized in two phases.
In the first phase, we have developed an image stabilization system to compensate the global tilt of the wave-front.
The second phase consists of sensing and correcting the local tilts of the wave-front by integrating a
micro-machined membrane deformable mirror with the image stabilization system and is currently in progress.
Here, we present the details of our proto-type AO system. We also present preliminary results obtained from
simulations using Phase Diversity as a post processing technique.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.