The primary mirror for a 10 meter class telescope will be made of many individual segments rather than a monolithic mirror, because of the ease with which the segments can be made, transported and replaced. An f1 primary mirror with an RoC of 20 meter is modeled using Zemax. The theoretical evaluation of the basic properties of the individual segments such as dimensions, orientation and location, has been carried out. The dimensions of each segment is different because the primary mirror is curved and aspheric. These parameters are further optimised with respect to the image spot size and also to minimise the narrow, uniform gap between the segments. The results of this optimisation is discussed in this paper.

Date Published: 15 June 2015
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9654, International Conference on Optics and Photonics 2015, 96540C (15 June 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2181743

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9654:
International Conference on Optics and Photonics 2015
Kallol Bhattacharya, Editor(s)