VISTA is a 4-metre survey telescope currently being constructed on the NTT peak of ESO’s Cerro Paranal Observatory. The telescope will be equipped with a dedicated infrared camera providing images of a 1.65 degree field of view. The telescope and camera are of an innovative f/3.26 design with no intermediate focus and no cold stop. The mosaic of 16 IR detectors is located directly at Cassegrain focus and a novel baffle arrangement is used to suppress stray light within the cryostat. The pointing and alignment of the telescope and camera is monitored by wavefront sensing elements within the camera cryostat itself. This paper describes the optical, mechanical, electronic and thermal design of the combined curvature sensor and auto-guider units positioned at the periphery of the camera field of view. Centroid and image aberration data is provided to the telescope control system allowing real time correction of pointing and alignment of the actively positioned M2 unit. Also described are the custom optics, mounted in the camera filter wheel, which are used to perform near on-axis high order curvature sensing. Analysis of the corresponding defocused images allows calibration tables of M1 actuator positions to be constructed for varying telescope declination and temperature.

Date Published: 29 September 2004
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 5499, Optical and Infrared Detectors for Astronomy, (29 September 2004); doi: 10.1117/12.552033

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5499:
Optical and Infrared Detectors for Astronomy
James D. Garnett; James W. Beletic, Editor(s)