The advances made in lightweight mirror technology over the past several years has been dramatic. Progress has been made in manufacturing precision, lightweighting, size, mirror segmentation, thermal stability, and asphericity. Minimization of mirror weight can be highly influenced by these factors. When considering active mirror technology, it is necessary to include the actuators as part of the effective mirror weight, since they are integral parts of the mirror system and influence figure accuracy, dynamic characteristics, and other issues associated with mirror performance. A comparison of active facesheet designs (solid versus lightweight) is presented, which illustrates the approach to minimizing mirror weight by optimizing the number of actuators.

Date Published: 16 September 1992
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 1690, Design of Optical Instruments, (16 September 1992); doi: 10.1117/12.138009

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1690:
Design of Optical Instruments
David M. Aikens; Victor L. Genberg; Gary C. Krumweide; Michael J. Thomas, Editor(s)