A 4-mirror prime focus corrector is under development to provide seeing-limited images for the 10-m aperture Hobby- Eberly Telescope (HET) over a 22 arcminute wide field of view. The images created by the spherical primary mirror are aberrated with 13 arcmin diameter point spread function. The University of Arizona is developing the 4-mirror wide field corrector to compensate the aberrations from the primary mirror and present seeing limited imaged to the pickoffs for the fiber-fed spectrographs. The requirements for this system pose several challenges, including optical fabrication of the aspheric mirrors, system alignment, and operational mechanical stability. This paper presents current status of the program which covers fabrication of mirrors and structures and pretest result from the alignment of the system.

Date Published: 22 July 2014
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 9145, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, 914509 (22 July 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2056879

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9145:
Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V
Larry M. Stepp; Roberto Gilmozzi; Helen J. Hall, Editor(s)