Preliminary design of a Cassegrain focal station for New Robotic Telescope

Ali Ranjbar; Éamonn Harvey; David Copley; Iain A. Steele; Robert J. Smith; Stuart D. Bates

doi:10.1117/12.2629302

26 August 2022 Preliminary design of a Cassegrain focal station for New Robotic Telescope

Ali Ranjbar, Éamonn Harvey, David Copley, Iain A. Steele, Robert J. Smith, Stuart D. Bates

Proceedings Volume 12182, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IX; 1218239 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2629302
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2022, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Conference Poster

Abstract

The New Robotic Telescope (NRT) conceptual design has been developed to include an autonomous multi-instrument adaptor at the Cassegrain focal station. The focal station assembly is to consist of a field rotator to compensate the earth rotation, cable wrap, instrument adaptor, support structure, and a fold mirror mechanism to bring the telescope optical beam to the instruments. The design supports the use of multiple instruments around the Acquisition and Guidance box (A&G box) a single instrument port is located at the bottom of the box at the straight through port. The A&G box also includes an autoguider which will be mounted at the side of the box and fed a portion of the optical beam via a small pick off mirror. It will use a field outside that of usable the science field, and has been designed to comprise of off-the-shelf lenses, camera system and lens tubes to minimise cost. The field of view is large enough to conduct ‘blind autoguiding’ at an accuracy of 0.2” with the 4m class telescope. The entire assembly will then be mounted to the M1 cell, forming the bottom part of the telescope tube held between the telescope mount forks. The focal station assembly design will be summarised in this paper.

Citation Download Citation

Ali Ranjbar, Éamonn Harvey, David Copley, Iain A. Steele, Robert J. Smith, and Stuart D. Bates "Preliminary design of a Cassegrain focal station for New Robotic Telescope", Proc. SPIE 12182, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes IX, 1218239 (26 August 2022); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2629302

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