Control of Giant Multi-Segmented Telescopes

巨型多段望远镜的控制

• 批准号: 1027437
• 负责人: Petros Voulgaris
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-15 至 2015-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1027437&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Control; Giant; Multi; Segmented; Telescopes

Intellectual MeritMost concepts to build giant telescopes are based on extending the design of existing telescopes to larger sizes. For example, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) are based on the Keck design and on spin casting furnace technology. While both approaches are based on the proven technology of the 1980?s, these designs come with a high price tag because substantial engineering investments are required when scaling to a 30-m aperture; the primary mirror itself is expected to have a surface figure good to tens of nanometer in the presence of wind and gravitational deflections and the atmospheric turbulence must then be corrected by an adaptive optics (AO) system placed between the primary mirror and detector operating with many thousand actuators. An alternative approach is to use smaller segments, of the order of a few thousands, that are controlled at higher bandwidths to remove the effects of atmospheric turbulence and windshake at the primary mirror. This will produce a high performance telescope at significantly lower cost. The proposed research plans to address the control of the reflective surface of the primary mirror, a major technological challenge of ATLAS design. This work plans to leverage on the investigators? preliminary work on the application of recently developed distributed control techniques, and on their experimental test rigs to fully validate their control approach. Broader ImpactThis work will have implications to future astronomical and scientific discovery technologies. It will enable the building the construction of large telescopes by astronomers. In addition, the main educational impact of this effort will be in terms of (i) Developing courses and educational materials that discuss systematic approaches for control of large telescopic systems. (ii) Maintaining a Web-page at the University of Illinois which will be used to disseminate new results within the members of the ATLAS team as well as to the broader scientific and research community, including Argonne National Laboratories.

智力优点大多数建造巨型望远镜的概念都是基于将现有望远镜的设计扩展到更大的尺寸。例如，三十米望远镜（TMT）和巨型麦哲伦望远镜（GMT）都是基于凯克设计和旋转铸造炉技术。虽然这两种方法都基于 20 世纪 80 年代成熟的技术，但这些设计的价格很高，因为在扩展到 30 米孔径时需要大量的工程投资；在存在风和重力偏转的情况下，主镜本身的表面形状预计可达数十纳米，并且大气湍流必须通过放置在主镜和探测器之间的自适应光学（AO）系统进行校正数千个执行器。另一种方法是使用数千个较小的片段，这些片段在较高的带宽下进行控制，以消除大气湍流和风震对主镜的影响。这将以显着降低的成本生产出高性能望远镜。拟议的研究计划解决主镜反射面的控制，这是 ATLAS 设计的主要技术挑战。这项工作计划利用调查人员吗？应用最近开发的分布式控制技术的初步工作，以及他们的实验测试台，以充分验证他们的控制方法。更广泛的影响这项工作将对未来的天文学和科学发现技术产生影响。它将使得天文学家能够建造大型望远镜。此外，这项工作的主要教育影响将体现在（i）开发讨论大型望远镜系统控制的系统方法的课程和教育材料。 (ii) 在伊利诺伊大学维护一个网页，该网页将用于在 ATLAS 团队成员以及更广泛的科学和研究界（包括阿贡国家实验室）传播新成果。