Together with the ongoing major instrument upgrade of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) we present the planned upgrade of the HET Segment Control System (SCS) to SCS2. Because HET's primary mirror is segmented into 91 individual 1-meter hexagonal mirrors, the SCS is essential to maintain the mirror alignment throughout an entire night of observations. SCS2 will complete tip, tilt and piston corrections of each mirror segment at a significantly higher rate than the original SCS. The new motion control hardware will further increase the system's reliability. The initial optical measurements of this array are performed by the Mirror Alignment Recovery System (MARS) and the HET Extra Focal Instrument (HEFI). Once the segments are optically aligned, the inductive edge sensors give sub-micron precise feedback of each segment's positions relative to its adjacent segments. These sensors are part of the Segment Alignment Maintenance System (SAMS) and are responsible for providing information about positional changes due to external influences, such as steep temperature changes and mechanical stress, and for making compensatory calculations while tracking the telescope on sky. SCS2 will use the optical alignment systems and SAMS inputs to command corrections of every segment in a closed loop. The correction period will be roughly 30 seconds, mostly due to the measurement and averaging process of the SAMS algorithm. The segment actuators will be controlled by the custom developed HET Segment MOtion COntroller (SMOCO). It is a direct descendant of University Observatory Munich's embedded, CAN-based system and instrument control tool-kit. To preserve the existing HET hardware layout, each SMOCO will control two adjacent mirror segments. Unlike the original SCS motor controllers, SMOCO is able to drive all six axes of its two segments at the same time. SCS2 will continue to allow for sub-arcsecond precision in tip and tilt as well as sub-micro meter precision in piston. These estimations are based on the current performance of the segment support mechanics. SMOCO's smart motion control allows for on-the-y correction of the move targets. Since SMOCO uses state-of-the-art motion control electronics and embedded decentralized controllers, we expect reduction in thermal emission as well as less maintenance time.

The W. M. Keck Observatory Segment Repair Project is repairing stress-induced fractures near the support points in the primary mirror segments. The cracks are believed to result from deficiencies in the original design and implementation of the adhesive joints connecting the Invar support components to the ZERODUR mirror. Stresses caused by temperature cycling over 20 years of service drove cracks that developed at the glass-metal interfaces. Over the last few years the extent and cause of the cracks have been studied, and new supports have been designed. Repair of the damaged glass required development of specialized tools and procedures for: (1) transport of the segments; (2) pre-repair metrology to establish the initial condition; (3) removal of support hardware assemblies; (4) removal of the original supports; (5) grinding and re-surfacing the damaged glass areas; (6) etching to remove sub-surface damage; (7) bonding new supports; (8) re-installation of support assemblies; and (9) post-repair metrology. Repair of the first segment demonstrated the new tools and processes. On-sky measurements before and after repair verified compliance with the requirements. This paper summarizes the repair process, on-sky results, and transportation system, and also provides an update on the project status and schedule for repairing all 84 mirror segments. Strategies for maintaining quality and ensuring that repairs are done consistently are also presented.

The Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope Corporation (CFHT) plans to repurpose its observatory on the summit of Maunakea and operate a (60 segment) 11.25m aperture wide field spectroscopic survey telescope, the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE). The prime focus telescope will be equipped with dedicated instrumentation to take advantage of one of the best sites in the northern hemisphere and offer its users the ability to perform large surveys. Central themes of the development plan are reusing and upgrading wherever possible. MSE will reuse the CFHT site and build upon the existing observatory infrastructure, using the same building and telescope pier as CFHT, while minimizing environmental impact on the summit. MSE will require structural support upgrades to the building to meet the latest building seismic code requirements and accommodate a new larger telescope and upgraded enclosure. It will be necessary to replace the current dome since a larger slit opening is needed for a larger telescope. MSE will use a thermal management system to remove heat generated by loads from the building, flush excess heat from lower levels, and maintain the observing environment temperature. This paper describes the design approach for redeveloping the CFHT facility for MSE. Once the project is completed the new facility will be almost indistinguishable on the outside from the current CFHT observatory. Past experience and lessons learned from CFHT staff and the astronomical community will be used to create a modern, optimized, and transformative scientific data collecting machine.

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) is an innovative large telescope, located in West Texas at the McDonald Observatory. The HET operates with a fixed segmented primary and has a tracker, which moves the four-mirror corrector and prime focus instrument package to track the sidereal and non-sidereal motions of objects. We have completed a major multi-year upgrade of the HET that has substantially increased the pupil size to 10 meters and the field of view to 22 arcminutes by replacing the corrector, tracker, and prime focus instrument package. The new wide field HET will feed the revolutionary integral field spectrograph called VIRUS, in support of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX^§), a new low resolution spectrograph (LRS2), an upgraded high resolution spectrograph (HRS2), and later the Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF). The upgrade is being commissioned and this paper discusses the completion of the installation, the commissioning process and the performance of the new HET.

Chinese astronomical community has suggested to construct a high resolution precision and wide field survey of universal optical / infrared telescope, suitable for a wide range of cutting-edge scientific research subject. The telescope diameter is 12 meters, and it is composed of 84 pieces of hexagonal mirrors. After the completion, it could be a world's largest telescope. Its wide field survey function will be work together with the 30 meters telescope in the near future on the observation of complementary. The telescope optical system adopted innovative design ideas, its multiple focuses can achieve rapid switching; its atmospheric dispersion corrector lens-prism can correct aberration also, and with the advantage of simple structure; two layers of Nasmyth platform can be placed more scientific instruments. LAMOST, a Chinese large spectrum survey telescope has been built and put into operation many years, it has successfully developed the two segmented optical mirrors and one of them is with deformation of thin mirror active optical technology, as well as the batch grinding hexagonal off-axis mirror technology developed in recent years, for construction of the 12 meters telescope laid a good technical foundation.

Motivated by a desire to improve the KPNO Mayall 4m telescope’s pointing and tracking performance prior to the start of the DESI installation and by a need to improve the maintainability of its telescope control system (TCS), we recently completed a major modernization of that system based heavily on recent changes made at the CTIO Blanco 4m, as described by Warner et al (2012). We describe here the things we did differently from the Blanco upgrade. We also present results from the as-built performance of the new servo and pointing systems.

We present a new application of frame transfer Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) on measuring astronomical seeing. If a telescope is equipped with a shutterless, frame transfer CCD camera, a bright star will generate a trail during the frame transfer phase. Because the transfer is very fast, the trail is a series of short exposures (about 1 ms) of the target star. Therefore the centroid is jittery due to atmospheric turbulence, and the amplitude can be utilized to derive astronomical seeing. We present the preliminary results from STA1600FT CCD on the second Antarctic Survey Telescope (AST3) tested in China. The trail seeing moderately agrees with the simultaneous DIMM seeing.

During the last recent years, designs for several giant telescopes ranging from 20 to 40m in diameter are being developed: European Extremely Large Telescope Telescope (TMT). (E-ELT), Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and Thirty Meter It is evident that simple direct up-scaling of solutions that were more or less successful in the 8 to 10m class telescopes can not lead to viable designs for the future giant telescopes. New solutions are required to provide adequate load sharing, to cope with the large-scale derived deflections and to provide the required compliance, or to respond to structure-mechanism control interaction issues, among others. From IDOM experience in the development of the Dome and Main Structure of the European Extremely Large Telescope and our participation in some other giant telescopes, this paper reviews several design approaches for the main mechanisms and key structural parts of enclosures and mounts/main structures for giant telescopes, analyzing pros and cons of the different alternatives and outlining the preferred design schemes. The assessment is carried out mainly from a technical and performance-based angle but it also considers specific logistical issues for the assembly of these large telescopes in remote and space-limited areas, together with cost and schedule related issues.

The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Pathfinder radio telescope is currently surveying the northern hemisphere between 400 and 800 MHz. By mapping the large scale structure of neutral hydrogen through its redshifted 21 cm line emission between z∼0.8-2.5 CHIME will contribute to our understanding of Dark Energy. Bright astrophysical foregrounds must be separated from the neutral hydrogen signal, a task which requires precise characterization of the polarized telescope beams. Using the DRAO John A. Galt 26 m telescope, we have developed a holography instrument and technique for mapping the CHIME Pathfinder beams. We report the status of the instrument and initial results of this effort.

The suspension and rotation systems (typically called bogies) for Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) enclosures will carry structures that are 2-3 times greater in diameter and much heavier than enclosures for the previous generation of 6-10m telescopes. Via on-site visits and/or engineering documentation, we have surveyed eleven optical, infrared, and submillimeter 3-15m telescope enclosures, and report on key design features of the suspension and rotation systems, including wheel and track geometry, the wheel/track interface, average load per wheel, rotation drive method, etc. We discuss key considerations for the development of future suspension and rotation systems for ELT enclosures.

Following a 7-year, multi-million dollar effort to fabricate a 730 kg, 4 element Wide Field Corrector (WFC) for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) Wide Field Upgrade (WFU), it needed to be transported 820 km to its destination at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas. The final system optical test for the assembly required repeatability in the +/- 2μm range. Due to the size, mass, and ultimate destination of the payload, the only option available for transport was via roadway on a flat-bed trailer. While the route was primarily interstate highway, it presented a great variety of vibrational inputs due to poor paving conditions, and mountain roadways. Consideration also had be given to avoiding high ambient temperatures. Early in the design of the corrector assembly it was assumed that cable isolators would be the key element to isolate the payload from vibrational inputs, however, few documented references were available to provide the assurances required for transporting a load so key to the success of the telescope program. Tests were designed to simulate the load conditions, and inputs and outputs to the test load were measured for verification of the isolator performance. This was followed up with monitoring of vibration throughput during the actual shipment of the WFC. Upon arrival at the destination, the alignment of the assembly was checked and found to have no appreciable change in the alignment. Data and lessons learned are presented on the performance of air-ride trailers as well as the performance of cable isolators.

Space debris is becoming a very important and urgent problem for present and future space activities. For that reason many public and private Institutions in the world are being involved in order to monitor and control the debris population increase and to understand which facilities can be used for improving the surveillance and tracking capabilities. In this framework in 2014 we performed some preliminary observations in a beam parking, CW mode and a bistatic configuration, with a transmitter of 4 kW of the Italian Air Force and the SRT (Sardinia Radio Telescope) a 64 meters radiotelescope used as a receiver. We performed the observations in P band at 410 MHz, receiving the signal diffused from some debris of different sizes and distances in LEO orbit, in order to understand the performances and capabilities of the system. In this article we will describe the results of this observations campaign, the simulation work done for preparing it, the RCS (radar cross section) observed, the level of the received signals, the Doppler measurements, and the work we are doing for developing a new and higher performing digital back end, able to process the data received.

In 2013 the process of developing an Orbital Debris and Satellite observation capability for the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope was initiated. This process involved the modification of various operational aspects of the observatory. After a year of implementing the modifications the observatory was capable of providing deep space observations of orbital debris and satellites in a queue based format. The telescope has been operating with this capability for the past 2.5 years and has generated terabytes of observational data on orbital debris and satellites that are in the GEO satellite belt distributed across the Pacific Ocean.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Project¹ received its construction authorization from the National Science Foundation in August 2014. The Telescope and Site (T and S) group has made considerable progress towards completion in subsystems required to support the scope of the LSST science mission. The LSST goal is to conduct a wide, fast, deep survey via a 3-mirror wide field of view optical design, a 3.2-Gpixel camera, and an automated data processing system. The summit facility is currently under construction on Cerro Pachón in Chile, with major vendor subsystem deliveries and integration planned over the next several years. This paper summarizes the status of the activities of the T and S group, tasked with design, analysis, and construction of the summit and base facilities and infrastructure necessary to control the survey, capture the light, and calibrate the data. All major telescope work package procurements have been awarded to vendors and are in varying stages of design and fabrication maturity and completion. The unique M1M3 primary/tertiary mirror polishing effort is completed and the mirror now resides in storage waiting future testing. Significant progress has been achieved on all the major telescope subsystems including the summit facility, telescope mount assembly, dome, hexapod and rotator systems, coating plant, base facility, and the calibration telescope. In parallel, in-house efforts including the software needed to control the observatory such as the scheduler and the active optics control, have also seen substantial advancement. The progress and status of these subsystems and future LSST plans during this construction phase are presented.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a large (8.4 meter) wide-field (3.5 degree) survey telescope, which will be located on the Cerro Pachón summit in Chile. Both the Secondary Mirror (M2) Cell Assembly and Camera utilize hexapods to facilitate optical positioning relative to the Primary/Tertiary (M1M3) Mirror. A rotator resides between the Camera and its hexapod to facilitate tracking. The final design of the hexapods and rotator has been completed by Moog CSA, who are also providing the fabrication and integration and testing. Geometric considerations preclude the use of a conventional hexapod arrangement for the M2 Hexapod. To produce a more structurally efficient configuration the camera hexapod and camera rotator will be produced as a single unit. The requirements of the M2 Hexapod and Camera Hexapod are very similar; consequently to facilitate maintainability both hexapods will utilize identical actuators. The open loop operation of the optical system imposes strict requirements on allowable hysteresis. This requires that the hexapod actuators use flexures rather than more traditional end joints. Operation of the LSST requires high natural frequencies, consequently, to reduce the mass relative to the stiffness, a unique THK rail and carriage system is utilized rather than the more traditional slew bearing. This system utilizes two concentric tracks and 18 carriages.

In the construction phase since 2014, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is an 8.4 meter diameter wide-field (3.5 degrees) survey telescope located on the summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile. The reflective telescope uses an 8.4 m f/1.06 concave primary, an annular 3.4 m meniscus convex aspheric secondary and a 5.2 m concave tertiary. The primary and tertiary mirrors are aspheric surfaces figured from a monolithic substrate and referred to as the M1M3 mirror. This unique design offers significant advantages in the reduction of degrees of freedom, improved structural stiffness for the otherwise annular surfaces, and enables a very compact design. The three-mirror system feeds a threeelement refractive corrector to produce a 3.5 degree diameter field of view on a 64 cm diameter flat focal surface. This paper describes the current status of the mirror system components and provides an overview of the upcoming milestones including the mirror coating and the mirror system integrated tests prior to summit integration.

This paper describes the status and details of the large synoptic survey telescope^1,2,3 mount assembly (TMA). On June 9^th, 2014 the contract for the design and build of the large synoptic survey telescope mount assembly (TMA) was awarded to GHESA Ingeniería y Tecnología, S.A. and Asturfeito, S.A. The design successfully passed the preliminary design review on October 2, 2015 and the final design review January 29, 2016. This paper describes the detailed design by subsystem, analytical model results, preparations being taken to complete the fabrication, and the transportation and installation plans to install the mount on Cerro Pachón in Chile. This large project is the culmination of work by many people and the authors would like to thank everyone that has contributed to the success of this project.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a large (8.4 meter) wide-field (3.5 degree) survey telescope, which will be located on the Cerro Pachón summit in Chile ¹. As a result of the Telescope wide field of view, the optical system is unusually susceptible to stray light ². In addition, balancing the effect of wind induced telescope vibrations with Dome seeing is crucial. The rotating enclosure system (Dome) includes a moving wind screen and light baffle system. All of the Dome vents include hinged light baffles, which provide exceptional Dome flushing, stray light attenuation, and allows for vent maintenance access from inside the Dome. The wind screen also functions as a light screen, and helps define a clear optical aperture for the Telescope. The Dome must operate continuously without rotational travel limits to accommodate the Telescope cadence and travel. Consequently, the Azimuth drives are located on the fixed lower enclosure to accommodate glycol water cooling without the need for a utility cable wrap. An air duct system aligns when the Dome is in its parked position, and this provides air cooling for temperature conditioning of the Dome during the daytime. A bridge crane and a series of ladders, stairs and platforms provide for the inspection, maintenance and repair of all of the Dome mechanical systems. The contract to build the Dome was awarded to European Industrial Engineering in Mestre, Italy in May 2015. In this paper, we present the final design of this telescope and site sub-system.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is currently under construction and upon completion will perform precision photometry over the visible sky at a 3-day cadence. To meet the stringent relative photometry goals, LSST will employ multiple calibration systems to measure and compensate for systematic errors. This paper describes the design and development of these systems including: a dedicated calibration telescope and spectrograph to measure the atmospheric transmission function, a collimated beam projector to characterize the spatial dependence of the LSST transmission function and an at-field screen illumination system to measure the high-frequency variations in the global system response function.

The civil work, site infrastructure and buildings for the summit facility of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) are among the first major elements that need to be designed, bid and constructed to support the subsequent integration of the dome, telescope, optics, camera and supporting systems. As the contracts for those other major subsystems now move forward under the management of the LSST Telescope and Site (T and S) team, there has been inevitable and beneficial evolution in their designs, which has resulted in significant modifications to the facility and infrastructure. The earliest design requirements for the LSST summit facility were first documented in 2005, its contracted full design was initiated in 2010, and construction began in January, 2015. During that entire development period, and extending now roughly halfway through construction, there continue to be necessary modifications to the facility design resulting from the refinement of interfaces to other major elements of the LSST project and now, during construction, due to unanticipated field conditions. Changes from evolving interfaces have principally involved the telescope mount, the dome and mirror handling/coating facilities which have included significant variations in mass, dimensions, heat loads and anchorage conditions. Modifications related to field conditions have included specifying and testing alternative methods of excavation and contending with the lack of competent rock substrate where it was predicted to be. While these and other necessary changes are somewhat specific to the LSST project and site, they also exemplify inherent challenges related to the typical timeline for the design and construction of astronomical observatory support facilities relative to the overall development of the project.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) primary/tertiary (M1M3) mirror cell assembly supports both on-telescope operations and off-telescope mirror coating. This assembly consists of the cast borosilicate M1M3 monolith mirror, the mirror support systems, the thermal control system, a stray light baffle ring, a laser tracker interface and the supporting steel structure. During observing the M1M3 mirror is actively supported by pneumatic figure control actuators and positioned by a hexapod. When the active system is not operating the mirror is supported by a separate passive wire rope isolator system. The center of the mirror cell supports a laser tracker which measures the relative position of the camera and secondary mirror for alignment by their hexapods. The mirror cell structure height of 2 meters provides ample internal clearance for installation and maintenance of mirror support and thermal control systems. The mirror cell also functions as the bottom of the vacuum chamber during coating. The M1M3 mirror has been completed and is in storage. The mirror cell structure is presently under construction by CAID Industries. The figure control actuators, hexapod and thermal control system are under developed and will be integrated into the mirror cell assembly by LSST personnel. The entire integrated M1M3 mirror cell assembly will the tested at the Richard F Caris Mirror Lab in Tucson, AZ (formerly Steward Observatory Mirror Lab).

The University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory Project is to construct a 6.5m infrared telescope at the summit of Co. Chajnantor (5640m altitude) in northern Chile, promoted by the University of Tokyo. Thanks to the dry climate (PWV~0.5mm) and the high altitude, it will achieve excellent performance in the NIR to MIR wavelengths. The telescope has two Nasmyth foci where the facility instruments are installed and two folded-Cassegrain foci for carry-in instruments. All these four foci can be switched by rotating a tertiary mirror. The final focal ratio is 12.2 and the telescope foci have large field-of-view of 25ʹ in diameter. We adopted the 6.5m light-weighted borosilicate honeycomb primary mirror and its support system that are developed by Steward Observatory Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab. The dome enclosure has the shape of carousel, and large ventilation windows with shutters control the wind to flush heat inside the dome. The operation building with control room, aluminizing chamber and maintenance facilities is located at the side of the dome. Two cameras, SWIMS for spectroscopy and imaging in the near-infrared and MIMIZUKU in the mid-infrared, are being developed as the first-generation facility instruments. The operation of the telescope will be remotely carried out from a base facility at San Pedro de Atacama, 50km away from the summit. The construction of the telescope is now underway. Fabrication of the telescope mount has almost finished, and the pre-assembly has been carried out in Japan. The primary, secondary, and tertiary mirrors and their cells have been also fabricated, as well as their cells and support systems. Fabrication of the enclosure is now underway, and their pre-assembly in Japan will be carried out in 2016. Construction of the base facility at San Pedro de Atacama has been already completed in 2014, and operated for the activities in Atacama. The telescope is now scheduled to see the first light at the beginning of 2018.

The Telescopio San Pedro Martir (TSPM) is a new ground-based optical telescope project, with a 6.5 meters honeycomb primary mirror, to be built in the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional on the Sierra San Pedro Martir (OAN-SPM) located in Baja California, Mexico. The OAN-SPM has an altitude of 2830 meters above sea level; it is among the best location for astronomical observation in the world. It is located 1830 m higher than the atmospheric inversion layer with 70% of photometric nights, 80% of spectroscopic nights and a sky brightness up to 22 mag/arcsec2.

The TSPM will be suitable for general science projects intended to improve the knowledge of the universe established on the Official Mexican Program for Science, Technology and Innovation 2014-2018. The telescope efforts are headed by two Mexican institutions in name of the Mexican astronomical community: the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico and the Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica. The telescope has been financially supported mainly by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT). It is under development by Mexican scientists and engineers from the Center for Engineering and Industrial Development. This development is supported by a Mexican-American scientific cooperation, through a partnership with the University of Arizona (UA), and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). M3 Engineering and Technology Corporation in charge of enclosure and building design.

The TSPM will be designed to allow flexibility and possible upgrades in order to maximize resources. Its optical and mechanical designs are based upon those of the Magellan and MMT telescopes. The TSPM primary mirror and its cell will be provided by the INAOE and UA. The telescope will be optimized from the near ultraviolet to the near infrared wavelength range (0.35-2.5 m), but will allow observations up to 26μm. The TSPM will initially offer a f/5 Cassegrain focal station. Later, four folded Cassegrain and two Nasmyth focal stations are contemplated, nominally with focal ratios of f/5 and f/11. The concept will allow the use of existing instruments like MMIRS and MEGACAM. Available experience from currently working ground-based telescopes will be integrated with up-to-date technology specially for control and information management systems.

Its mount is the well-known azimuth-elevation configuration. The telescope total mass is estimated in about 245 metric tons, with a total azimuth load of 185 metric tons including around 110 metric tons as the total elevation load. A tracking error lower than 0.03 arcsec RMS is expected under steady wind up to 50 Km/h. An open-loop pointing accuracy between 10 and 2 arcsec is planned. The TSPM is in its design phase. It is the first large optical ground-based telescope to be designed and developed primarily by Mexican scientists and engineers. This endeavor will result in the improvement of the scientific and technical capabilities of Mexico including complex scientific instruments development, systems engineering and project management for large engineering projects. In this paper, which aims to gather the attention of the community for further discussions, we present the engineering preliminary design, the basic architecture and challenging technical endeavors of the TSPM project.

ALMA is now nearing the end of its third cycle of operations, and is transitioning from ‘early science’ to regular PI-driven observing. The array has been operated over the complete range of available baseline lengths, from <10m with the ACA out to the maximum of 16km in the long-baseline configuration. Typically 40 12m-diameter antennas are now used at any one time. In this paper, we summarise the advertised capabilities and how they have evolved in the first 5 years, the proposal pressure and ‘hot spots’, and describe some of the issues with the real measured system performance. We also outline the observing statistics, project completion rates, and papers from ALMA. Finally we highlight some of the new transformational science coming from this facility.

Since the ALMA North America Prototype Antenna was awarded to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), SAO and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) are working jointly to relocate the antenna to Greenland. This paper shows the status of the antenna retrofit and the work carried out after the recommissioning and subsequent disassembly of the antenna at the VLA has taken place. The next coming months will see the start of the antenna reassembly at Thule Air Base. These activities are expected to last until the fall of 2017 when commissioning should take place. In parallel, design, fabrication and testing of the last components are taking place in Taiwan.

The MMT Observatory, a joint venture of the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Arizona, operates the 6.5-m MMT telescope on the summit of Mount Hopkins approximately 45 miles south of Tucson, AZ. The upgraded telescope has been in routine operation for nearly fifteen years and, as such, is a very reliable and productive general purpose astronomical instrument. The telescope can be configured with one of three secondary mirrors that feed more than ten instruments at the Cassegrain focus. In this paper we provide an overview of the the telescope, its current capabilities, and its performance. We will review the existing suite of instruments and their different modes of operation. We will describe some of the general operations challenges and strategies for the Observatory. Finally, we will discuss plans for the near-term future including technical upgrades, new instrumentation and routine queue operation of MMIRS and Binospec.

ESO is now fully engaged in building the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), a 40-m class optical nearinfrared telescope to be installed on top of Cerro Armazones, Chile and become operational around 2025. The Programme was formally approved by ESO Council back in 2012. However the required funding level for starting construction was actually reached in 2014, leading to a Green Light to start large construction contracts in December of that year. Since then, the programme has entered a very busy phase leading to the signature of the first major industrial contracts as well as the agreements with scientific institutes in ESO Member States to design and built the first suite of science instruments. This paper summarizes the current status of the E-ELT Programme and presents some aspects related to scientific objectives, managerial organization, programmatic aspects and system engineering approach. It also outlines the procurement strategies put in place to achieve the goal of the Programme: building the 'world's biggest eye on the sky' within the next decade.

EELT AIV is the activity of assembly, integration and verification of EELT (European Extremely Large Telescope) subsystems to deliver a telescope capable of fulfilling its top-level requirements and ready to start science commissioning, leading to operations. The AIV (Assembly Integration Verification) phase covers all technical activities on Armazones and nearby Paranal Observatory from the moment the sub-systems and components are delivered or accepted on-site (from the responsible sub-system project manager). AIV includes final system tests of the completed telescope (known as “Technical Commissioning”) and the installation, alignment and telescope integration of the science instruments. The AIV phase ends with the handover of the completed telescope with installed instruments, to the start of Science Commissioning. Responsibility then passes to the Commissioning team, however the technical resources for debugging and tuning the telescope and instrument will come from a combination of the AIV team working together with the Paranal operations staff. AIV is one of the major technical challenge of E-ELT. The sheer scale and complexity of the telescope involves challenging logistics and scheduling i.e. 798 mirror segments with a staged delivery over four years, including 9,048 edge sensor and 2,394 position actuators. More than ten major sub-systems e.g. M2-3-4-5, PreFocal Station (PFS) and instruments will be integrated and tested in parallel. Finally, the technical commissioning phase will be a significant challenge. E-ELT is a highly complex active telescope system with a fully-integrated adaptive optics (AO) system. During early testing nothing will be straightforward and there will be many system-level problems to overcome. It will take a dedicated team of the “best of the best” people to troubleshoot, debug, tune, and hand over as an operational facility.

For the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) that aims high-resolution and high-sensitivity observations for optical-infrared astronomy, detailed design is underway for Telescope Structure System (STR) including the mount control system and the segment handling system. The technical requirements for the STR system are very challenging on its performance and interface condition with telescope-mounted optics and observation instruments. The major challenging technical requirements include low flexure of mirror support structure and low optical path length variation due to gravitational deformation, high seismic performance against large earthquake, very accurate mount drive control for high tracking and guiding performance, and fast, safe and labor-saving segment exchange. To meet these technical requirements, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO) has made a detailed design and technology development. In this paper, overview of major key technologies is introduced that is adopted for the TMT telescope structure in the detailed design and technology development.

This paper describes the design of the surface metrology instrument used for manufacturing the 1.5m segmented telescope mirrors. It discusses challenges associated with the design of the instrument, tracking of segment surface data measured with the instrument and cross calibration of the instruments for use at multiple manufacturing sites. The instruments were evaluated for repeatability and reproducibility.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will have a 25.4-meter diameter effective aperture, and is one the three currently planned next generation extremely large telescopes (ELTs). The GMT will be located at the summit of Cerro Campanas at the Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) in Chile, one the world’s best observing sites. This paper provides an overview of the site master plan comprising site infrastructure, enclosure, and facilities, and outlines the analysis of alternative trade studies that will lead to the final design. Also presented is an update of the site infrastructure development and preconstruction activities currently underway that will be completed prior to the beginning of enclosure construction near the end of 2016.

Future large telescopes, such as E-ELT and TMT, will need feedback control of the thousands of actuators underneath their segmented primary mirrors (M1). Differences in actuator dynamics and spatially and temporally changing disturbances make it extremely difficult to formulate classical controllers which are both sufficiently robust and highly performing. Therefore, TNO has developed and tested a control approach, in which the actual system response is quickly measured, disturbances are continuously estimated and the controller is adapted in real-time. The algorithm is tested on an actual M1-relevant setup, in which it converges to a sub-nm optimum within a few minutes, keeps track of changing disturbances and shows its reliability over multiple days.

The Giant Magellan Telescope Project is in the construction phase. Production of the primary mirror segments is underway with four of the seven required 8.4m mirrors at various stages of completion and materials purchased for segments five and six. Development of the infrastructure at the GMT site at Las Campanas is nearing completion. Power, water, and data connections sufficient to support the construction of the telescope and enclosure are in place and roads to the summit have been widened and graded to support transportation of large and heavy loads. Construction pads for the support buildings have been graded and the construction residence is being installed. A small number of issues need to be resolved before the final design of the telescope structure and enclosure can proceed and the GMT team is collecting the required inputs to the decision making process. Prototyping activities targeted at the active and adaptive optics systems are allowing us to finalize designs before large scale production of components begins. Our technically driven schedule calls for the telescope to be assembled on site in 2022 and to be ready to receive a subset of the primary and secondary mirror optics late in the year. The end date for the project is coupled to the delivery of the final primary mirror segments and the adaptive secondary mirrors that support adaptive optics operations.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)¹ is a 25 m telescope composed of seven 8.4 m “unit telescopes”, on a common mount. Each primary and conjugated secondary mirror segment will feed a common instrument interface, their focal planes co-aligned and co-phased. During telescope operation, the alignment of the optical components will deflect due to variations in thermal environment and gravity induced structural flexure of the mount. The ultimate co-alignment and co-phasing of the telescope is achieved by a combination of the Acquisition Guiding and Wavefront Sensing system and two segment edge-sensing systems². An analysis of the capture range of the wavefront sensing system indicates that it is unlikely that that system will operate efficiently or reliably with initial mirror positions provided by open-loop corrections alone³.

The project is developing a Telescope Metrology System (TMS) which incorporates a large number of absolute distance measuring interferometers. The system will align optical components of the telescope to the instrument interface to (well) within the capture range of the active optics wavefront sensing systems. The advantages offered by this technological approach to a TMS, over a network of laser trackers, are discussed. Initial investigations of the Etalon Absolute Multiline Technology™ by Etalon Ag⁴ show that a metrology network based on this product is capable of meeting requirements. A conceptual design of the system is presented and expected performance is discussed.

The Iranian National Observatory site is under construction at an altitude of 3600m at Mount Gargash in central Iran. It offers a promising site for optical and near-IR observations with a 0.7 arcsec median seeing and thus a number of observing facilities have been planned. The largest facility is a 3.4m Alt- Az reflecting Ritchey-Chretien optical telescope under development with an exit focal ratio of ~f/11 providing a generous 20 arcmin field of view at the main Cassegrain focus. This telescope will be equipped with high resolution medium-wide field imaging camera as well as medium and high resolution spectrographs. The telescope will benefit from an active support for the primary mirror. The primary mirror has been manufactured, polished and delivered. In this project overview, the design parameters for the 3.4m telescope and the current status of the project are presented.

Described is the M1 segment support, as designed by TNO in the period 2015-2016. The design has significantly changed and improved compared to the earlier designs. During the period 2009-2010 prototypes for the primary mirror support of the E-ELT have been developed. These have been extensively tested by ESO. Design improvement were found to be necessary, especially in the field of manufacturability and maintainability. Furthermore, the technical performance had to improve in specific areas as well. This has evolved into a new specifications which have resulted in a new design for the segment support structure. The design rules that have led to the prototype design have been maintained but the implementation has been much improved. Also considerable improvement has been obtained with respect to the dynamic behavior. Accessibility and visibility on all parts and subsystems has changed such that everything is now clearly visible. Despite the increased performance no mass increase has been recorded meaning that more efficient use has been made of the material.

The active means to influence the segment shape by use of the warping harness has been completely redesigned. A very important quality that has been achieved is simplicity. Hence a minimum amount of components is used. Reliability and safety are other aspects that have been greatly improved compared to the prototypes. The design for the M1 segment support provides a solution that not only performs to specification but one that can be operated in a telescope environment, all 798 of them.

ASTRI SST-2M is an end-to-end telescope prototype developed by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in the framework of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). The CTA observatory, with a combination of large-, medium-, and small-sized telescopes (LST, MST and SST, respectively), will represent the next generation of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. It will explore the very high-energy domain from a few tens of GeV up to few hundreds of TeV.

The ASTRI SST-2M telescope structure and mirrors have been installed at the INAF observing station at Serra La Nave, on Mt. Etna (Sicily, Italy) in September 2014. Its performance verification phase began in autumn 2015. Part of the scheduled activities foresees the study and characterization of the optical and opto-mechanical performance of the telescope prototype.

In this contribution we report the results achieved in terms of kinematic model analysis, mirrors reflectivity evolution, telescopes positioning, flexures and pointing model and the thermal behavior.

The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) is pioneering the usage of novel Geiger-mode operated Avalanche Photo Diodes (G-APD, nowadays usually called SiPM) for Cherenkov Telescopes. The camera consists of 1440 pixels with dedicated electronics operated at 2 GHz and is installed on a refurbished telescope with a mirror area of ≈ 9:5 m² at the Canary Island La Palma. The camera was installed in October 2011, and data are taken almost every night since then. The very stable and reliable operation allows to operate FACT from remote without the need of a data taking crew on-site. Over the years, operation became more and more automatic, and the next step will be to switch to fully automatic operation. This results in a very high data taking efficiency. The operation of FACT allows monitoring the long-term behavior of few variable extra-galactic very-high energy sources with unprecedented sampling density as well as testing the behavior of the sensors under harsh conditions. Despite operating also under strong moonlight conditions and therefore collecting far more signals than during dark nights, the G-APDs show no change in their performance or any indication for ageing. Understanding the behavior of the G-APDs under all the varying conditions allows to operate FACT without the need of any external calibration device. The properties of the sensors themselves allow for a high precision self-calibration of the camera.

We provide an update on the construction status of the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. This 4-m diameter facility is designed to enable detection and spatial/temporal resolution of the predicted, fundamental astrophysical processes driving solar magnetism at their intrinsic scales throughout the solar atmosphere. These data will drive key research on solar magnetism and its influence on solar winds, flares, coronal mass ejections and solar irradiance variability. The facility is developed to support a broad wavelength range (0.35 to 28 microns) and will employ state-of-the-art adaptive optics systems to provide diffraction limited imaging, resolving features approximately 20 km on the Sun. At the start of operations, there will be five instruments initially deployed: Visible Broadband Imager (VBI; National Solar Observatory), Visible SpectroPolarimeter (ViSP; NCAR High Altitude Observatory), Visible Tunable Filter (VTF (a Fabry-Perot tunable spectropolarimeter); Kiepenheuer Institute for Solarphysics), Diffraction Limited NIR Spectropolarimeter (DL-NIRSP; University of Hawaii, Institute for Astronomy) and the Cryogenic NIR Spectropolarimeter (Cryo-NIRSP; University of Hawaii, Institute for Astronomy).

As of mid-2016, the project construction is in its 4th year of site construction and 7th year overall. Major milestones in the off-site development include the conclusion of the polishing of the M1 mirror by University of Arizona, College of Optical Sciences, the delivery of the Top End Optical Assembly (L3), the acceptance of the Deformable Mirror System (Xinetics); all optical systems have been contracted and are either accepted or in fabrication. The Enclosure and Telescope Mount Assembly passed through their factory acceptance in 2014 and 2015, respectively. The enclosure site construction is currently concluding while the Telescope Mount Assembly site erection is underway. The facility buildings (Utility and Support and Operations) have been completed with ongoing work on the thermal systems to support the challenging imaging requirements needed for the solar research.

Finally, we present the construction phase performance (schedule, budget) with projections for the start of early operations.

The 1.8-m primary mirror of solar telescope is heated by the solar radiation and introduce harmful mirror seeing degrading the imaging quality. For the Chinese Large Solar Telescope (CLST), the thermal requirement based on the quantitative evaluation on mirror seeing effect shows that the temperature rise on mirror surface should be within 1 kelvin. To meet the requirement, an active thermal control system design for the CLST primary mirror is proposed, and realized on the subscale prototype of the CLST. The experimental results show that the temperature on the mirror surface is well controlled. The average and maximum thermal controlled error are less than 0.3 and 0.7 kelvins respectively, which completely meets the requirements.

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) was envisioned from an early stage to incorporate a functional safety system to ensure the safety of personnel and equipment within the facility. Early hazard analysis showed the need for a functional safety system. The design used a distributed approach in which each major subsystem contains a PLC-based safety controller. This PLC-based system complies with the latest international standards for functional safety. The use of a programmable controller also allows for flexibility to incorporate changes in the design of subsystems without adversely impacting safety. Various subsystems were built by different contractors and project partners but had to function as a piece of the overall control system. Using distributed controllers allows project contractors and partners to build components as standalone subsystems that then need to be integrated into the overall functional safety system. Recently factory testing was concluded on the major subsystems of the facility. Final integration of these subsystems is currently underway on the site. Building on lessons learned in early factory tests, changes to the interface between subsystems were made to improve the speed and ease of integration of the entire system. Because of the distributed design each subsystem can be brought online as it is delivered and assembled rather than waiting until the entire facility is finished. This enhances safety during the risky period of integration and testing. The DKIST has implemented a functional safety system that has allowed construction of subsystems in geographically diverse locations but that function cohesively once they are integrated into the facility currently under construction.

The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) will be the largest solar telescope in the world, and will be able to provide the sharpest views ever taken of the solar surface. The telescope has a 4m aperture primary mirror, however due to the off axis nature of the optical layout, the telescope Mount has proportions similar to an 8 metre class telescope. The Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) includes both the telescope Mount and the 16m diameter laboratory table or Coudé Rotator. The Coudé Rotator supports the full instrument suite of up to 40 tonnes and has full rotation capabilities similar to the Mount azimuth axis. The TMA has been going through the design, fabrication and assembly process since 2009 with Ingersoll Machine Tool’s and this culminated with the Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT). The preparation for the FAT started not long after the Final Design Review was complete and planning continued through the assembly stages. The official Factory Acceptance testing of the Coudé Rotator was conducted during May/Jun 2014 and the Mount in Feb through Apr 2015. This paper provides an overview and discussion of the testing that was carried out. The depth and extent of testing will be described with discussion on what we would do differently next time. Also details of the preparation / process that lead into the testing will be presented. Most importantly the results will be summarized and lessons learned during the testing provided as well as discussion on how this influences the planned site assembly and extent of re-test post assembly.

Repairs to the W.M. Keck Observatory primary mirror segments are needed to stop the cracking at the bonded supports. The repairs include changes to the design of the axial and radial inserts and the way these are bonded to the mirror backsurface. In this paper, we present finite element analyses of a primary mirror segment including whiffletree and radial mirror support system to determine the effect of the modified supports on the mirror figure. Displacements of the front surface are calculated for a number of operational and assembly fit-up cases, and differential displacements between the old and new support system are found. Zernike coefficients are calculated for front surface displacements and differential displacements. Stresses on the glass surface at the radial pad bond locations are also determined. The results show that the residual deformations of the mirror front surface with the new supports are similar to those with the old supports, differing only in the immediate vicinity of the axial inserts and radial pads, and the impact on the image quality of the Keck telescopes is negligible.

On 15 October 2006, a large earthquake damaged both telescopes at W. M. Keck Observatory resulting in weeks of observing downtime. A significant portion of the downtime was attributed to recovery efforts repairing damage to telescope bearing journals, radial pad support structures, and encoder subsystems. To reduce the risk of damage and loss of observing time in future seismic events, we developed a conceptual design for the seismic upgrade of the twin Keck Telescopes. The paper covers the design requirements and constraints for the seismic upgrade, the evaluation method used to check the safety of sensitive components, and the trade-off study used to compare different options and to select the best design. Various design options such as base isolating the structure, strengthening seismic restraints, adding dampers, adding break-away mechanisms, and combinations of these design options are considered in this study. Nonlinear time history analyses are performed to evaluate the performance of the design concepts.

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) project is a collaboration designing the largest non-ELT optical/NIR astronomical telescope to date. MSE is unique as a major astronomical facility since it involves the redevelopment of an existing facility, that of the Canada France Hawai‘i Telescope (CFHT), with a newly expanded partnership. The project office is hosted at CFHT in Waimea HI, and includes new partners from Australia, China, India and Spain. The project is being developed by an international collaboration with design team membership distributed across four continents. In addition to a report on the progress and organization of design work, this paper describes the challenges of redeveloping a major astronomical site in Hawai‘i. We discuss the Project Office and engineering work from the aspects of meeting the Science Requirements while satisfying the unique conditions imposed by redevelopment on Maunakea.

The QUIJOTE Experiment (Q-U-I JOint TEnerife) is a combined operation of two telescopes and three instruments working in the microwave band to measure the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from the northern hemisphere, at medium and large angular scales. The experiment is located at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife, one of the seven Canary Islands (Spain). The project is a consortium maintained by several institutions: the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the Instituto de Física de Cantabria (IFCA), the Communications Engineering Department (DICOM) at Universidad de Cantabria, and the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge. The consortium is led by the IAC.

The Evryscope is a new type of telescope which covers the entire accessible sky in each exposure. Its 8000- square-degree field-of-view and 691 MPix telescope is sensitive to exoplanet transits and other short timescale events not discernible from existing large-sky-area astronomical surveys. The telescope, which places 24 separate individual telescopes into a common mount which tracks the entire accessible sky with only one moving part, is building 1%-precision, many-year-length, high-cadence light curves for every accessible object brighter than ~16th magnitude. The camera readout times are short enough to provide near-continuous observing, with a 97% survey time efficiency. The Evryscope has the largest survey grasp of any current ground-based survey, and for bright-object high-cadence observations is the only existing survey within an order of magnitude of LSST's etendue. We deployed the Evryscope, funded by NSF/ATI, at CTIO in May 2015. We here present the telescope design, performance, and project status.

The Magellan Telescopes are a set of twin 6.5 meter ground based optical/near-IR telescopes operated by the Carnegie Institution for Science at the Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) in Chile. The primary mirrors are f/1.25 paraboloids made of borosilicate glass and a honeycomb structure. The secondary mirror provides both f/11 and f/5 focal lengths with two Nasmyth, three auxiliary, and a Cassegrain port on the optical support structure (OSS). The telescopes have been in operation since 2000 and have experienced several small earthquakes with no damage. Measurement of in situ response of the telescopes to seismic events showed significant dynamic amplification, however, the response of the telescopes to a survival level earthquake, including component level forces, displacements, accelerations, and stresses were unknown. The telescopes are supported with hydrostatic bearings that can lift up under high seismic loading, thus causing a nonlinear response. For this reason, the typical response spectrum analysis performed to analyze a survival level seismic earthquake is not sufficient in determining the true response of the structure. Therefore, a nonlinear transient finite element analysis (FEA) of the telescope structure was performed to assess high risk areas and develop acceleration responses for future instrument design. Several configurations were considered combining different installed components and altitude pointing directions. A description of the models, methodology, and results are presented.

The Antarctic Survey Telescope-AST3 consists of three optical telescopes with 680mm primary mirror and 8 square degree field of view, mainly for observations of supernovas and extrasolar planets searching from Antarctic Dome A. The first two AST3 telescopes (AST3-1 and AST3-2) were successfully installed on Dome A by Chinese expedition team in Jan. 2012 and Jan. 2015 separately. Multi-anti-frost methods were designed for AST3-2 and the automatic observations are keeping on from March 2016. The best limited magnitude is 19.4m with exposure time 60s in G band. The third AST3 will have switchable interface for both optical camera and near infrared camera optimized for k dark band survey. Now the telescope is under development in NIAOT and the K-band camera is under development in AAO.

Dome A 5m Terahertz Explorer (DATE5) is a proposed telescope to be deployed at Dome A, Antarctica to explore the excellent terahertz observation condition unique to the site. One of the key challenges of the telescope is to realize and maintain the required 10 μm rms overall reflector surface accuracy under the extreme site conditions and unmanned operating mode. Aluminum panels on carbon fiber backup structures is one of the candidate options for the 5 meter main reflector. For aluminum panels, three major technical risks were identified: 1) the large CTE of aluminum causes significant panel deformation due to the large seasonal soak temperature change; 2) internal stress may cause additional surface deformation when operating under a cold environment; 3) reflector panels working at Dome A run high risks of icing (which degrades antenna efficiency and increases noise) and automatic active de-icing mechanisms has to be implemented on the panels. In order to verify the feasibility of the aluminum panels for DATE5 and identify possible technical risks, a prototype panel was fabricated and went through rigorous tests. The manufacture error at the room temperature is 3.2 μm rms, which meets the budget. The panel surface is then measured at various ambient temperatures down to -60°C in a climate chamber using photogrammetric techniques. The additional surface error at the low temperatures is found to be mainly contributed by defocusing error, and the dependence of the panel focal length on temperature is well predictable. No additional surface error caused by internal stress has been observed. Next, the icing condition of the panel is analyzed and a prototype de-icing system based on polyimide film heaters was installed on the panel. The performance of the de-icing system was tested in a climate chamber as well as in the field experiments to simulate a variety of operating environments. The experiments indicate that the power required for de-icing the entire main reflector is less than 1kW and the temperature field produced by the de-icing system has trivial effect on the surface accuracy of the panel. This study indicates that aluminum panels have the potential to meet the reflector surface error budget under the harsh environment of Dome A.

The Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) reached its full operational capability in 2014 and completed hundreds of observation flights. Since its installation in 2002, the Secondary Mirror Mechanism was subject to thousands of operating hours equivalent to millions of load cycles. During the aircraft heavy maintenance in fall 2014, a four month time window enabled the removal of the mechanism from the telescope structure for service and improvements. Next to visual corrosion- and crack-inspection of the flexures, critical electronic components (in particular the set of three eddy current position sensors that determine the mirror tilt) were replaced. Moreover, a detailed temperature dependent position calibration of the system was performed in a cold chamber to improve the pointing accuracy. Until then, a simple temperature independent linear gain was used to translate the sensor output voltage into a position. For accurate positioning across the whole temperature range, a temperature dependent correction function had to be developed. This calibration would have cost hours of observing time when performed in flight which made it an essential goal for completion during the maintenance period. An autocollimator was used as optical reference camera to measure the tip-tilt position of the secondary mirror in the cold chamber. Using this calibration setup, a pattern of many mirror positions in the tip-tilt domain was approached at several temperature points to provide a high resolution data set for the new multidimensional calibration function. Follow-up in-flight verification measurements confirmed a large improvement in pointing accuracy as soon as the temperature measurements were included into the position correction. Improvements of up to a factor of 10 were especially noticed in the lower temperature range. This contribution provides an insight into the work performed during the SOFIA - Secondary Mirror Mechanism maintenance with the focus on the temperature dependent position calibration.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has already successfully conducted over 300 flights. In its early science phase, SOFIA's pointing requirements and especially the image jitter requirements of less than 1 arcsec rms have driven the design of the control system. Since the first observation flights, the image jitter has been gradually reduced by various control mechanisms. During smooth flight conditions, the current pointing and control system allows us to achieve the standards set for early science on SOFIA. However, the increasing demands on the image size require an image jitter of less than 0.4 arcsec rms during light turbulence to reach SOFIA's scientific goals. The major portion of the remaining image motion is caused by deformation and excitation of the telescope structure in a wide range of frequencies due to aircraft motion and aerodynamic and aeroacoustic effects. Therefore the so-called Flexible Body Compensation system (FBC) is used, a set of fixed-gain filters to counteract the structural bending and deformation. Thorough testing of the current system under various flight conditions has revealed a variety of opportunities for further improvements. The currently applied filters have solely been developed based on a FEM analysis. By implementing the inflight measurements in a simulation and optimization, an improved fixed-gain compensation method was identified. This paper will discuss promising results from various jitter measurements recorded with sampling frequencies of up to 400 Hz using the fast imaging tracking camera.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has three target acquisition and tracking cameras. All three imagers originally used the same cameras, which did not meet the sensitivity requirements, due to low quantum efficiency and high dark current. The Focal Plane Imager (FPI) suffered the most from high dark current, since it operated in the aircraft cabin at room temperatures without active cooling. In early 2013 the FPI was upgraded with an iXon3 888 from Andor Techonolgy. Compared to the original cameras, the iXon3 has a factor five higher QE, thanks to its back-illuminated sensor, and orders of magnitude lower dark current, due to a thermo-electric cooler and “inverted mode operation." This leads to an increase in sensitivity of about five stellar magnitudes.

The Wide Field Imager (WFI) and Fine Field Imager (FFI) shall now be upgraded with equally sensitive cameras. However, they are exposed to stratospheric conditions in flight (typical conditions: T≈-40° C, p≈ 0:1 atm) and there are no off-the-shelf CCD cameras with the performance of an iXon3, suited for these conditions. Therefore, Andor Technology and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI) are jointly developing and qualifying a camera for these conditions, based on the iXon3 888. These changes include replacement of electrical components with MIL-SPEC or industrial grade components and various system optimizations, a new data interface that allows the image data transmission over∼30m of cable from the camera to the controller, a new power converter in the camera to generate all necessary operating voltages of the camera locally and a new housing that fulfills airworthiness requirements. A prototype of this camera has been built and tested in an environmental test chamber at temperatures down to T=-62° C and pressure equivalent to 50 000 ft altitude. In this paper, we will report about the development of the camera and present results from the environmental testing.

SOFIA has reached in the last two years its full operational capabilities and is producing now great science on typically three observing flights per week. The telescope is the backbone of the observatory and is working nearly perfectly. This may be the right time to have a look on the design history of the telescope and some of the major subsystems, which ensure the functionality under the harsh aero-acoustic environment inside the aircraft cavity. A comparison with SOFIA’s predecessor KAO gives insight in to the challenges of airborne telescope design. The paper describes the development of the optical subsystem, the telescopes structure, the telescope mount and the interface to the aircraft from the conceptual design up to the finally as-built telescope, and comments on their influence on the overall observatory performance.

The advances in battery life, flight control software and carbon fibre technology over recent years have made the use of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as an airborne calibration platform for astronomical facilities a possibility. This is especially attractive for arrays of telescopes spread over a large area such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). It is envisaged that the CTA will use UAVs to perform a range of calibration routines, with the primary routines being the cross-calibration of the optical throughput for different telescope types, as well as monitoring of the multi-wavelength performance of CTA's telescopes and the characterisation of the atmosphere above CTA. In this contribution, the cross-calibrating performance of an airborne calibration device is described, together with some preliminary test flights to characterise the flight performance of a UAV carrying the calibration payload.

Atmosphere layers, especially the troposphere, hinder the astronomical observation. For more than 100 years astronomers have tried observing from balloons to avoid turbulence and extinction. New developments in cardsize computers, RF equipment and satellite navigation have democratised the access to the stratosphere. As a result of a ProAm collaboration with the Daedalus Team we have developed a low-cost multi-purpose platform with stratospheric balloons carrying up to 3 kg of scientific payload. The Daedalus Team is an amateur group that has been launching sounding probes since 2010. Since then the first two authors have provided scienti fic payloads for nighttime flights with the purpose of technology demonstration for astronomical observation. We have successfully observed meteor showers (Geminids 2012, Camelopardalis 2014, Quadrantids 2016 and Lyrids 2016) and city light pollution emission with image and video sensors covering the 400-1000nm range.

We present the details of the optical design, corrector system, mechanical layout, tolerances, pointing requirements, and overall performance of the sub-millimeter wavelength Large Balloon Reflector telescope (LBR).

India's largest 3.6 m aperture optical telescope facility has been recently established at Devasthal site by Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observation Sciences (ARIES), an autonomous Institute under Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. The telescope is equipped with active optics and it is designed to be used for seeinglimited observations at visible and near-infrared wavelengths. A steel building with rotating cylindrical steel Dome was erected to house 3.6m telescope and its accessories at hilltop of Devasthal site. Customized cranes were essentially required inside the building as there were space constraints around the telescope building for operating big external heavy duty cranes from outside, transportation constraints in route for bringing heavy weight cranes, altitude of observatory, and sharp bends etc. to site. To meet the challenge of telescope installation from inside the telescope building by lifting components through its hatch, two Single Girder cranes and two Under Slung cranes of 10 MT capacity each were specifically designed and developed. All the four overhead cranes were custom built to achieve the goal of handling telescope mirror and its various components during installation and assembly. Overhead cranes were installed in limited available space inside the building and tested as per IS 3177. Cranes were equipped with many features like VVVFD compatibility, provision for tandem operation, digital load display, anti-collision mechanism, electrical interlocks, radio remote, low hook height and compact carriage etc. for telescope integration at site.

Lowell Observatory's Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) is a 4.3-m telescope designed and constructed for optical and near infrared astronomical observation. The DCT is equipped with a cube capable of carrying five instruments along with the wave front sensing and guider systems at the f/6.1 RC focus. The facility formally finished commissioning at the end of 2014. In 2015 the DCT ran in full science operations mode. This report recaps recent progress on the operations and instrument fronts, and then concentrates on the delivered image quality as measured with science imaging data. The system is delivering image quality at or better than the system top level requirements for open loop operations. Corrected to the zenith, the median seeing in the science images from 2015 was 0."93; first quartile seeing was 0.0074. The open loop site contribution to the seeing is roughly 0."40, which is better than the requirements of < 0."47. The FWHM degrades with wind speed at the rate of roughly 0."10/(m/s), and the seeing degrades more with wind speed when the wind is from the East.

The current status of the facility instrumentation for the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is reviewed. The LBT encompasses two 8.4 meter primary mirrors on a single mount yielding an effective collecting area of 11.8 meters or 23 meters when interferometrically combined. The three facility instruments at LBT include: 1) the Large Binocular Cameras (LBCs), each with a 23’× 25’ field of view (FOV). The blue optimized and red optimized optical wavelength LBCs are mounted at the prime focus of the SX (left) and DX (right) primary mirrors, respectively. Combined, the filter suite of the two LBCs cover 0.3-1.1 μm, including the addition of new medium-band filters centered on TiO (0.78 μm) and CN (0.82 μm); 2) the Multi-Object Double Spectrograph (MODS), two identical optical spectrographs each mounted at the straight through f/15 Gregorian focus of the primary mirrors. The capabilities of MODS-1 and -2 include imaging with Sloan filters (u, g, r, i, and z) and medium resolution (R ∼ 2000) spectroscopy, each with 24 interchangeable masks (multi-object or longslit) over a 6’× 6’ FOV. Each MODS is capable of blue (0.32-0.6 μm) and red (0.5-1.05 μm) wavelength only spectroscopy coverage or both can employ a dichroic for 0.32-1.05 μm wavelength coverage (with reduced coverage from 0.56- 0.57 μm); and 3) the two LBT Utility Camera in the Infrared instruments (LUCIs), are each mounted at a bent-front Gregorian f/15 focus of a primary mirror. LUCI-1 and 2 are designed for seeing-limited (4’× 4’ FOV) and active optics using thin-shell adaptive secondary mirrors (0.5’× 0.5’ FOV) imaging and spectroscopy over the wavelength range of 0.95-2.5 μm and spectroscopic resolutions of 400 ≤ R ≤ 11000 (depending on the combination of grating, slits, and cameras used). The spectroscopic capabilities also include 32 interchangeable multi-object or longslit masks which are cryogenically cooled. Currently all facility instruments are in-place at the LBT and, for the first time, have been on-sky for science observations. In Summer 2015 LUCI-1 was refurbished to replace the infrared detector; to install a high-resolution camera to take advantage of the active optics SX secondary; and to install a grating designed primarily for use with high resolution active optics. Thus, like MODS-1 and -2, both LUCIs now have specifications nearly identical to each other. The software interface for both LUCIs have also been replaced, allowing both instruments to be run together from a single interface. With the installation of all facility instruments finally complete we also report on the first science use of “mixed-mode” operations, defined as the combination of different paired instruments with each mirror (i.e. LBC+MODS, LBC+LUCI, LUCI+MODS). Although both primary mirrors reside on a single fixed mount, they are capable of operating as independent entities within a defined “co-pointing” limit. This provides users with the additional capability to independently dither each mirror or center observations on two different sets of spatial coordinates within this limit.

The MeerKAT radio telescope is currently in full production in South Africa’s Karoo region, and by association, so is the Square Kilometre Array Phase 1 (SKA1) MID telescope. MeerKAT will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope array in the centimetre wavelength regime in the southern skies until the SKA1 MID telescope is operational, and is well on its way to realising the MeerKAT vision of being a world class instrument that exceeds its original specification. This paper identifies the key telescope specifications, discusses the high-level architecture and current progress to meet the specifications and lastly reports on lessons learnt in the process.

We report on a plan to construct a 50-m-class single-dish telescope, the Large Submillimeter Telescope (LST). The conceptual design and key science behind the LST are presented, together with its tentative specifications. This telescope is optimized for wide-area imaging and spectroscopic surveys in the 70-420 GHz frequency range, which spans the main atmospheric windows at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths for good observation sites such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) site in Chile. We also target observations at higher frequencies of up to 1 THz, using an inner high-precision surface. Active surface control is required in order to correct gravitational and thermal deformations of the surface, and will be useful for correction of the wind-load deformation. The LST will facilitate new discovery spaces such as wide-field imaging with both continuum and spectral lines, along with new developments for time-domain science. Through exploitation of its synergy with ALMA and other telescopes, the LST will contribute to research on a wide range of topics in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics, e.g., astrochemistry, star formation in our Galaxy and galaxies, the evolution of galaxy clusters via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect, the search for transients such as γ-ray burst reverse shocks produced during the epoch of re-ionization, electromagnetic follow up of detected gravitational wave sources, and examination of general relativity in the vicinity of super massive black holes via submillimeter very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI).

The North American astronomical community is considering a future large area radio array optimized to perform imaging of thermal emission down to milliarcsecond scales. This `Next Generation Very Large Array' would entail ten times the effective collecting area of the Jansky Very Large Array, operate from 1GHz to 115GHz, with ten times longer baselines (300km) providing milliarcsecond resolution, and include a dense core on kilometer scales for high surface brightness imaging. The preliminary design, capabilities, and some of the priority science goals of the instrument are summarized.

The SKA1-LOW radio telescope will be a low-frequency (50-350 MHz) aperture array located in Western Australia. Its scientific objectives will prioritize studies of the Epoch of Reionization and pulsar physics. Development of the telescope has been allocated to consortia responsible for the aperture array front end, timing distribution, signal and data transport, correlation and beamforming signal processors, infrastructure, monitor and control systems, and science data processing. This paper will describe the system architectural design and key performance parameters of the telescope and summarize the high-level sub-system designs of the consortia.

The observation bands of the 5 meter Dome A Terahertz Explorer (DATE5) are primarily over the wavelength of 350 and 200 μm. However, the pointing performance of DATE5 is affected by the unsteady wind, which either acts directly on the telescope structure or transmits through the ice and foundation. According to the above performance requirements of DATE5, the pointing error caused by the wind disturbance must be less than 2 arcsec. The main influence of the disturbances acting on the telescope is forces and torques due to wind gusts. Alternating forces and torques cause displacements of the telescope as well as structural oscillations. Both effects lead to pointing errors and therefore have to be compensated as much as possible by the main axes servo controllers. Wind acting on the telescope can be treated as random event, whose expected values depend on the specific site. The wind velocity throughout a given time interval can be described as a randomly varying velocity superimposed upon a constant average or mean velocity. For the dynamic analysis, the two components are separated and only the fluctuating component is used. In this paper, the dynamic analysis (mode analysis and spectrum analysis) of DATE5 is carried out based on the physically realistic environmental disturbances of dome A.

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) will be the fastest dedicated cm-wave survey telescope, and will consist of 36 12-meter 3-axis antennas, each with a large chequerboard phased array feed (PAF) receiver operating between 0.7 and 1.8 GHz, and digital beamforming prior to correlation. The large raw data rates involved (~100 Tb/sec), and the need to do pipeline processing, has led to the antenna incorporating a third axis to fix the parallactic angle with respect to the entire optical system (blockages and phased array feed). It also results in innovative technical solutions to the data transport and processing issues. ASKAP is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), a new observatory developed for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), 315 kilometres north-east of Geraldton, Western Australia. The MRO also hosts the SKA low frequency pathfinder instrument, the Murchison Widefield Array and will host the initial low frequency instrument of the SKA, SKA1-Low. Commissioning of ASKAP using six antennas equipped with first-generation PAFs is now complete and installation of second-generation PAFs and digital systems is underway. In this paper we review technical progress and commissioning to date, and refer the reader to relevant technical and scientific publications.

The exponential growth in exoplanet studies and science cases requiring high contrast observations is a powerful reason for developing very large optical systems optimized for narrow-field science. Concepts which cross the boundary between fixed aperture telescopes and interferometers, combined with technologies that decrease the system moving mass, can violate the cost and mass scaling laws that make conventional large-aperture telescopes relatively expensive. Here we describe concepts of large, filled-aperture (Colossus) and partially filled aperture (ParFAIT) interferometric optical/IR telescope systems which break this scaling relation. These systems are dedicated to high dynamic range science such as detecting life and even civilizations on Earth-like planets.

While optical and radio transient surveys have enjoyed a renaissance over the past decade, the dynamic infrared sky remains virtually unexplored. The infrared is a powerful tool for probing transient events in dusty regions that have high optical extinction, and for detecting the coolest of stars that are bright only at these wavelengths. The fundamental roadblocks in studying the infrared time-domain have been the overwhelmingly bright sky background (250 times brighter than optical) and the narrow field-of-view of infrared cameras (largest is 0.6 sq deg). To begin to address these challenges and open a new observational window in the infrared, we present Palomar Gattini-IR: a 25 sq degree, 300mm aperture, infrared telescope at Palomar Observatory that surveys the entire accessible sky (20,000 sq deg) to a depth of 16.4 AB mag (J band, 1.25μm) every night. Palomar Gattini-IR is wider in area than every existing infrared camera by more than a factor of 40 and is able to survey large areas of sky multiple times. We anticipate the potential for otherwise infeasible discoveries, including, for example, the elusive electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave detections. With dedicated hardware in hand, and a F/1.44 telescope available commercially and cost-effectively, Palomar Gattini-IR will be on-sky in early 2017 and will survey the entire accessible sky every night for two years. We present an overview of the pathfinder Palomar Gattini-IR project, including the ambitious goal of sub-pixel imaging and ramifications of this goal on the opto-mechanical design and data reduction software.

Palomar Gattini-IR will pave the way for a dual hemisphere, infrared-optimized, ultra-wide field high cadence machine called Turbo Gattini-IR. To take advantage of the low sky background at 2.5 μm, two identical systems will be located at the polar sites of the South Pole, Antarctica and near Eureka on Ellesmere Island, Canada. Turbo Gattini-IR will survey 15,000 sq. degrees to a depth of 20AB, the same depth of the VISTA VHS survey, every 2 hours with a survey efficiency of 97%.

The Instituto de Astronomia of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) along with Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica, the University of Arizona and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory are developing the Telescopio San Pedro Mártir (TSPM) project, a 6.5m diameter optical telescope. M3 Engineering and Technology Corp. (M3) is the design and construction management firm responsible for all site infrastructure, enclosure and support facilities. The Telescopio San Pedro Mártir project (TSPM) will be located within the San Pedro Mártir National Park in Baja California, Mexico at 2,830 m. above sea level, approximately 65 km. east of the Pacific Ocean, 55km west of the Sea of Cortes (Gulf of California) and 180km south of the United States and México border. The aim of the paper is to present the preliminary design of the site infrastructure, enclosure and support facilities to date and share the design and construction approach.

Telescopio San Pedro Mártir (TSPM) project intends to build a 6.5 meters telescope with alt-azimuth design, currently at the conceptual design. The project is an association between Instituto de Astronomía de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (IA-UNAM) and the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica Electrónica (INAOE) in partnership with department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory of University of Arizona and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory of Harvard University. Conceptual design of the telescope is lead and developed by the Centro de Ingeniería y Desarrollo Industrial (CIDESI). An overview of the feasibility study and the structural conceptual design are summarized in this paper. The telescope concept is based on telescopes already commissioned such as MMT and the Baade and Clay Magellan telescopes, building up on these proven concepts. The main differences relative to the Magellan pair are; the elevation axis is located 1 meter above the primary mirror vertex, allowing for a similar field of view at the Cassegrain and both Nasmyth focal stations; instead of using a vane ends to position the secondary mirror TSPM considers an Steward platform like MMT; finally TSPM has a larger floor distance to m1 cell than Magellans and MMT. Initially TSPM will operate with an f/5 Cassegrain station, but the design considers further Nasmyth configurations from a Cassegrain f/5 up to a Gregorian f/11. The telescope design includes 7 focal stations: 1 Cassegrain; 2 Nasmyth; and 4 folded-Cassegrain. The telescope will be designed and manufactured in Mexico, will be design in Queretaro by CIDESI and built between Queretaro and Michoacán manufacturing facilities; it will be preassembled in these facilities and disassembled to send it to the San Pedro Mártir Observatory for final integration. The azimuth and altitude structure is planned to be constructed in modules and transported by truck and shipped to Ensenada and finally to the OAN where is going to be finally assembled, verified and tested.

The National Astronomical Research Institute (NARIT) is currently developing an all spherical five lenses focal reducer to image a FOV circular of diameter Δθ = 14.6’ on the 4K camera with a pixel scale equal to 0.42’’/pixel. The spatial resolution will be better than 1.2’’ over the full visible spectral domain [400 nm, 800 nm]. The relative irradiance between the ghost and the science images will be lower than 10^-4. The maximum distortion will be lower than 1% and the maximum angle of incidence on the filters will be equal to 8°. The focal reducer comprises 1 doublet L1 located at the fork entrance and 1 triplet L2 located in front of the camera. The doublet L1 will be mounted on a tip-tilt mount placed on a robotic sliding rail. L1 will thus be placed in the optical path during the observations with the 4K camera and will be removed during the observations with the other instruments. The triplet L2 will be installed on the instrument cube in front of the camera equipped with the filter wheel. The glass will be manufactured in a specialized company, the mechanical parts will be manufactured by using the NARIT Computer Numerical Control machine and the lenses will be integrated at NARIT. In this paper, we describe the optical and mechanical designs and we present the geometrical performance, the transmission budget and the results of the stray light analyses.

The Nasmyth platforms of the E-ELT will contain one Prefocal Station (PFS) each. The main PFS functional requirements are to provide a focal plane to the three Nasmyth focal stations and the Coudé focus, optical sensing supporting telescope low order optimisation and seeing limited image quality, and optical sensing supporting characterising and phasing of M1 and other telescope subsystems. The PFS user requirements are used to derive the PFS technical requirements specification that will form the basis for design, development and production of the system. This specification process includes high-level architectural decisions and technical performance budget allocations. The mechanical design concepts reported here have been developed in order to validate key system specifications and associated technical budgets.

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer is designed to be the largest non-ELT optical/NIR astronomical telescope, and will be a fully dedicated facility for multi-object spectroscopy over a broad range of spectral resolutions. The MSE design has progressed from feasibility concept into its current baseline design where the system configuration of main systems such as telescope, enclosure, summit facilities and instrument are fully defined. This paper will describe the engineering development of the main systems, and discuss the trade studies to determine the optimal telescope and multiplexing designs and how their findings are incorporated in the current baseline design.

We present the design and development of the DEdicatedMONitor of EXotransits and Transients (DEMONEXT), an automated and robotic 20 inch telescope jointly funded by The Ohio State University and Vanderbilt University. The telescope is a PlaneWave CDK20 f/6.8 Corrected Dall-Kirkham Astrograph telescope on a Mathis Instruments MI-750/1000 Fork Mount located atWiner Observatory in Sonoita, AZ. DEMONEXT has a Hedrick electronic focuser, Finger Lakes Instrumentation (FLI) CFW-3-10 filter wheel, and a 2048 x 2048 pixel FLI Proline CCD3041 camera with a pixel scale of 0.90 arc-seconds per pixel and a 30.7× 30.7 arc-minute field-of-view. The telescope’s automation, controls, and scheduling are implemented in Python, including a facility to add new targets in real time for rapid follow-up of time-critical targets. DEMONEXT will be used for the confirmation and detailed investigation of newly discovered planet candidates from the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) survey, exploration of the atmospheres of Hot Jupiters via transmission spectroscopy and thermal emission measurements, and monitoring of select eclipsing binary star systems as benchmarks for models of stellar evolution. DEMONEXT will enable rapid confirmation imaging of supernovae, flare stars, tidal disruption events, and other transients discovered by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN). DEMONEXT will also provide follow-up observations of single-transit planets identified by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, and to validate long-period eclipsing systems discovered by Gaia.

We present results on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulations as well as the wind tunnel experiments for the observation facilities of the University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory 6.5m Telescope being constructed at the summit of Co. Chajnantor in northern Chile. Main purpose of this study starting with the baseline design reported in 2014 is to analyze topographic effect on the wind behavior, and to evaluate the wind pressure, the air turbulence, and the air change (ventilation) efficiency in the enclosure. The wind velocity is found to be accelerated by a factor of ~ 1.2 to reach the summit (78 m sec^-1 expected at a maximum), and the resulting wind pressure (3,750 N m^-2) is used for the framework design of the facilities. The CFD data reveals that the open space below the floor of the facilities works efficiently to drift away the air turbulence near the ground level which could significantly affect the dome seeing. From comparisons of the wind velocity field obtained from the CFD simulation for three configurations of the ventilation windows, we find that the windows at a level of the telescope secondary mirror have less efficiency of the air change than those at lower levels. Considering the construction and maintenance costs, and operation procedures, we finally decide to allocate 13 windows at a level of the observing floor, 12 at a level of the primary mirror, and 2 at the level of the secondary mirror. The opening area by those windows accounts for about 14% of the total interior surface of the enclosure. Typical air change rate of 20-30 per hour is expected at the wind velocity of 1 m sec^-1.

Normally, telescope systems applied for astronomic purposes have rather narrow field. Survey telescopes which are the systems with angular field up to several degrees are applied in several spheres not only for astronomic purposes but also for weather observing, comets and asteroids detecting (asteroid and comet threats or ACT). Systems with relatively small diameters (below 1.5m) are of interest both for ground-based and space instruments. As a rule, such systems should be fast (up to F/3 … F/1.5 and faster). Therefore, the most part of survey telescopes are reflective systems with additional lens correctors. Lens elements in these instruments can lead to some difficulties because the possibility of manufacturing large size lens correctors of the optimal glass sort is not always exist. So, from that point mirror systems can provide more advantages. Mirror systems are also of great interest due to the wide spectrum range used for operation. However, the design of the mirror system that can give both sufficient f-number and large angular field is the complicated and complex task, first of all because of difficulty during the choosing the initial principal scheme. Using the expressions based on the third-order aberration theory several system of survey telescopes were chosen which can provide the needed characteristics. The examples of the schemes are given, including their optical characteristics.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)¹ is a 25 m “doubly segmented” telescope composed of seven 8.4 m “unit Gregorian telescopes”, on a common mount. Each primary and secondary mirror segment will ideally lie on the geometrical surface of the corresponding rotationally symmetrical full aperture optical element. Therefore, each primary and conjugated secondary mirror segment will feed a common instrument interface, their focal planes co-aligned and cophased. First light with a subset of four unit telescopes is currently scheduled for 2022. The project is currently considering an important aspect of the assembly, integration and verification (AIV) phase of the project. This paper will discuss a dedicated system to directly characterize the on-sky performance of the M1 segments, independently of the M2 subsystem. A Primary Mirror Metrology System (PMS) is proposed. The main purpose of this system will be to he4lp determine the rotation axis of an instrument rotator (the Gregorian Instrument Rotator or GIR in this case) and then to characterize the deflections and deformations of the M1 segments with respect to this axis as a function of gravity and temperature. The metrology system will incorporate a small (180 mm diameter largest element) prime focus corrector (PFC) that simultaneously feeds a <60” square acquisition and guiding camera field, and a Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor. The PMS is seen as a significant factor in risk reduction during AIV; it allows an on-sky characterization of the primary mirror segments and cells, without the complications of other optical elements. The PMS enables a very useful alignment strategy that constrains each primary mirror segments’ optical axes to follow the GIR axis to within a few arc seconds. An additional attractive feature of the incorporation of the PMS into the AIV plan, is that it allows first on-sky telescope operations to occur with a system of considerably less optical and control complexity than the final doubly segmented Gregorian telescope configuration. This paper first discusses the strategic rationale for a PMS. Next the system itself is described in some detail. Finally, some description of the various uses the PMS will be put to during AIV of the M1 segments and subsequent characterization will be described.

Performance of the GMT azimuth drive system is vital for the operation of the telescope and, as such, all components subject to wear at the drive interface merit a high level of scrutiny for achieving a proper balance between capital costs, maintenance costs, and the risk for downtime during planned and unplanned maintenance or replacement procedures. Of particular importance is the interface between the azimuth wheels and rail, as usage frequency is high, the full weight of the enclosure must be transferred through small patches of contact, and replacement of the rail would pose a greater logistical challenge than the replacement of smaller components such as bearings and gearmotors. This study investigates tradeoffs between various wheel-rail and roller-track interfaces, including performance, complexity, and anticipated wear considerations. First, a survey of railway and overhead crane industry literature is performed and general detailing recommendations are made to minimize wear and the risk of rolling contact fatigue. Second, Adams/VI-Rail is used to simulate lifetime wear of four specific configurations under consideration for the GMT azimuth wheel-rail interface; all studied configurations are shown to be viable, and their relative merits are discussed.

The alignment of the subapertures is a major challenge for future segmented telescopes and telescope arrays. We show here that a phase diversity sensor using two near-focus images can fully and efficiently align a multiple aperture system, both for the alignment (large amplitude tip/tilt aberrations correction) and phasing (piston and small amplitude tip/tilt aberrations correction) modes. We derive a new algorithm for the alignment of the subapertures : ELASTIC. We quantify the novel algorithm performance by numerical simulations and we demonstrate it experimentally on a test bench. We also study the performance of LAPD, a recent real-time algorithm for the phasing of the sub-apertures. This work should simplify the design of future multiple aperture systems.

In this paper we will briefly revisit the optical vibration measurement system (OVMS) at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and how these values are used for disturbance compensation and particularly for the LBT Interferometer (LBTI) and the LBT Interferometric Camera for Near-Infrared and Visible Adaptive Interferometry for Astronomy (LINC-NIRVANA). We present the now centralized software architecture, called OVMS+, on which our approach is based and illustrate several challenges faced during the implementation phase. Finally, we will present measurement results from LBTI proving the effectiveness of the approach and the ability to compensate for a large fraction of the telescope induced vibrations.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) organisation is building a low frequency (50-350 MHz) aperture array to be located in remote Western Australia. The array consists of 512-stations, each consisting of 256-dual polarisation log-periodic antennas. The stations are distributed over a distance of 80km, with the greatest density of stations located in the central core. The input bandwidth is processed in a two stage polyphase filterbank, with the first stage channeliser producing 384 x 781 kHz narrow-band channels. Each station beamforms the antennas together to form a single dual polarisation beam with a bandwidth of 300 MHz (additional beams can also be traded for bandwidth). The second stage polyphase filterbank is located in a system called the Correlator and BeamFormer (CBF) which is the topic of this paper. In the CBF the station signals are first aligned in time. Thereafter the signals are simultaneously correlated and beamformed.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) consists of 66 antennas with the aperture equivalent to a 91-m diameter antenna. The Green Bank Telescope (GBT) is the world’s largest, 100-m diameter telescope in the wavelength range of 3 mm to 30 cm. The Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) will be the world´s largest, 50-m diameter, steerable millimeter-wavelength telescope. The Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT) will be the world’s largest, 25-m diameter, submillimeter-wavelength telescope. We will investigate advantages and disadvantages of both the aperture synthesis telescope and the large single-dish telescope taking the cost effectiveness into consideration, and will propose the design of antenna structure for a future telescope project at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.

The SPEED project - the Segmented Pupil Experiment for Exoplanet Detection - in development at the Lagrange laboratory, aims at gearing up strategies and technologies for high-contrast instrumentation with segmented telescopes. This new instrumental platform offers an ideal environment in which to make progress in the domain of ELTs and/or space-based missions with complex apertures. It combines all the required recipes (phasing optics, wavefront control/shaping, and advanced coronagraphy) to get to very close angular separation imaging. In this paper, we report on the optical design and subsystems advances and we provide a progress overview.

In this paper we will briefly revisit the optical vibration measurement system (OVMS) at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) and how these values are used for disturbance compensation and particularly for the LBT Interferometer (LBTI) and the LBT Interferometric Camera for Near-Infrared and Visible Adaptive Interferometry for Astronomy (LINC-NIRVANA). We present the now centralized software architecture, called OVMS+, on which our approach is based and illustrate several challenges faced during the implementation phase. Finally, we will present measurement results from LBTI proving the effectiveness of the approach and the ability to compensate for a large fraction of the telescope induced vibrations.

Future extremely large telescopes will open a niche for exoplanet direct imaging at the expense of using a primary segmented mirror which is known to hamper high-contrast imaging capabilities. The focal plane diffraction pattern is dominated by bright structures and the way to reduce them is not straightforward since one has to deal with strong amplitude discontinuities in this kind of unfriendly pupil (segment gaps and secondary support). The SPEED experiment developed at Lagrange laboratory is designed to address this specific topic along with high-contrast at very small separation. The baseline design of SPEED will combine a coronagraph and two deformable mirrors to create dark zones at the focal plane. A first step in this project was to identify under which circumstances the deep contrast at small separation is achievable. In particular, the DMs location is among the critical aspect to consider and is the topic covered by this paper.

Segment Handling System (SHS) is the subsystem that is planned to be permanently implemented on Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) telescope structure that enables fast, efficient, semi-automatic exchange of M1 segments. TMT plans challenging segment exchange (10 segments per 10 hours a day). To achieve these, MELCO develops innovative SHS by accommodating Factory Automation (FA) technology such as force control system and machine vision system into the system. Force control system used for install operation, achieves soft handling by detecting force exerted to mirror segment and automatically compensating the position error between handling segments and primary mirror. Machine vision system used for removal operation, achieves semi-automatic positioning between SHS and mirror segments to be handled. Prototype experience proves soft (extraneous force ~300N) and fast (~3 minutes) segment handling. The SHS will provide upcoming segmented large telescopes for cost-efficient, effortless, and safe segment exchange operation.

SHS (Segment Handling System) is the subsystem implemented on the telescope. One of the key technologies of SHS is our force control technology applied to Segment Mirror Exchange Robot, which makes it possible to achieve safe and reliable mirror segment exchange as shown in Video 1.

A feedforward vibration cancellation system can be used to compensate for fast wind-induced telescope vibrations. Crucial is the position reconstructors ability to provide the compensation mirror with an accurate online estimate of the vibrational displacement. The authors have developed and presented a position reconstructor based on adaptive resonators. However, network data transmission of the acceleration signals introduces a time delay into the measurement chain. Any feedforward compensation setup can only function well if a delay-free estimate of the disturbance signal is provided. Three delay-compensating extensions of the developed position reconstructor are presented and analyzed.

Many digital background calibration techniques exist which correct for offset, gain, timing and bandwidth mismatches in time-interleaved (TI) ADCs. Some require an additional reference channel, whereas others are blind and rely on the presence of a band where no signal is present (usually around the Nyquist frequency) or exploit other properties of the input signal. Blind calibration techniques, which don’t use a reference channel, are suitable for correction of commercial TI-ADCs, or TI-ADC systems using commercial ADCs as channels. Techniques employing additional channels require a more complex layout (especially for the clock tree) and need an additional ADC, whose overhead cost is significant, especially for 2- or 4- channel TI-ADCs. However, we show that the estimation process is faster and more accurate when a reference channel is present, and many different error models can be used (exploiting different points in the accuracy / complexity trade-off).

Since 2004 the Gemini telescopes have used a protected 4-layer silver coating on their 8-meter diameter primary mirror and other smaller optics. Protected silver was chosen for the twin telescopes due to its high reflectivity and low emissivity properties. For over 10 years the protected 4-layer silver coating at Gemini exceeded the science requirements for reflectivity of 88% between 0.4-0.7 μm and 84% between 0.7-1.1 μm. Initial durability requirements that the coating should last at least two years have been also been surpassed. All mirrors have met the durability requirement, with most outlasting it significantly. Provided is a ten year retrospective on the progress in the use and maintenance of 4-layer silver coatings on large astronomical optics.

Mask exchange system is the main part of Multi-Object Broadband Imaging Echellette (MOBIE) on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The robot is one of the key parts in the mask exchange process. In view of the facts that the scheme the on-board robot is hard to meet the requirements of TMT and the traditional industrial robot is difficult to use in the Mask Exchange System (MEX). The delta parallel mechanism has much advantages such as good dynamic performance, high speed and could integrate a vision recognition system to identify the masks. The design for MEX based on off-board Delta parallel mechanism was proposed in the paper.

To ensure the performance of the optical components in birefringent filter, high precision constant temperature condition is necessary. We research and realize a new thermostat for it. Firstly, we compare and select the high precision temperature sensors and designed the complicated signal acquisition circuits; Secondly, we design and assemble the high efficiency thermal insulation layers and a secondary thermostat; Thirdly, we use an ARM 7 processor as the central processing unit and realize the intelligent heat algorithm. Two sets of this new generation thermostat had been put into use since 2012, the temperature variation resolution of this new thermostat is better than 0.001°C and the temperature stability of the birefringent filter is within 0.01°C.

The Small Size Telescope with Single Mirror (SST-1M) is one of the proposed types of Small Size Telescopes (SST) for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). The CTA south array will be composed of about 100 telescopes, out of which about 70 are of SST class, which are optimized for the detection of gamma rays in the energy range from 5 TeV to 300 TeV. The SST-1M implements a Davies-Cotton optics with a 4 m dish diameter with a field of view of 9°. The Cherenkov light produced in atmospheric showers is focused onto a 88 cm wide hexagonal photo-detection plane, composed of 1296 custom designed large area hexagonal silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) and a fully digital readout and trigger system. The SST-1M camera has been designed to provide high performance in a robust as well as compact and lightweight design. In this contribution, we review the different steps that led to the realization of the telescope prototype and its innovative camera.

Immersion gratings will play important roles for infrared astronomy in the next generation. We have been developing immersion gratings with a variety of kinds of materials and have succeeded in fabricating a high-efficiency germanium (Ge) immersion grating with both a reflection coating on the grating surface and an AR coating on the entrance surface. The grating will be installed in a K-, L-, and M-bands (2-5μm) high-resolution (R=80,000) spectrograph, VINROUGE, which is a prototype for the TMT MIR instrument. In this paper, we report the preliminary results on the evaluation of the Ge immersion grating. We confirmed that the peak absolute diffraction efficiency was in the range of 70-80%, which was as expected from the design, at both room and cryogenic temperatures.

Optical designs are presented for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) telescope. The adopted baseline design is a prime focus telescope with a segmented primary of 11.25m aperture, with speed f/1.93 and 1.52° field-of-view, optimized for wavelengths 360-1800nm. The Wide-Field Corrector (WFC) has five aspheric lenses, mostly of fused silica, with largest element 1.33m diameter and total glass mass 788kg. The Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC) is of the compensating lateral type, combining a motion of the entire WFC via the hexapod, with a restoring motion for a single lens. There is a modest amount of vignetting (average 5% over the hexagonal field); this greatly improves image quality, and allows the design to be effectively pupil-centric. The polychromatic image quality is d₈₀<0.225"/0.445" at ZD 0/60° over more than 95% of the hexagonal field-of-view. The ADC action allows adjustment of the plate-scale with zenith distance, which is used to halve the image motions caused by differential refraction. A simple design is presented for achieving the required ADC lens shifts and tilts. A two-mirror design was also undertaken for MSE, but was not selected. This is a 12.3m F/2.69 forward Cassegrain design, with a 2.75m diameter M2, and three silica lenses, of largest diameter 1.33m. The field-of-view is again 1.52°. The f/0.95 primary makes the design remarkably compact, being under 10m long. The ADC action involves a small motion of M2 (again via a hexapod), and shifts and tilts of a single lens. The design is effectively pupil-centric, with modest vignetting (5.9% average). The image quality is virtually identical to the prime focus design.

The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 10-m class 91-segment fixed altitude telescope located at Sutherland, South Africa. The segment alignment is maintained by inductively coupled sensors mounted on Sitall brackets beneath the segments. An extensive period of testing in environmental chambers and on the telescope has been conducted to establish the stability of the sensors and their response to temperature and humidity variations in the telescope chamber. We present some of the test results, including a demonstration of the ability of the sensors to maintain the alignment of the primary mirror over a period of 6 days.

The Liverpool Telescope is a fully robotic 2-metre telescope located at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on the Canary Island of La Palma. The telescope began routine science operations in 2004, and currently seven simultaneously mounted instruments support a broad science programme, with a focus on transient followup and other time domain topics well suited to the characteristics of robotic observing. Work has begun on a successor facility with the working title ‘Liverpool Telescope 2’. We are entering a new era of time domain astronomy with new discovery facilities across the electromagnetic spectrum, and the next generation of optical survey facilities such as LSST are set to revolutionise the field of transient science in particular. The fully robotic Liverpool Telescope 2 will have a 4-metre aperture and an improved response time, and will be designed to meet the challenges of this new era. Following a conceptual design phase, we are about to begin the detailed design which will lead towards the start of construction in 2018, for first light ∼2022. In this paper we provide an overview of the facility and an update on progress.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is an 8-meter class wide-field telescope now under construction on Cerro Pachon, near La Serena, Chile. This ground-based telescope is designed to conduct a decade-long time domain survey of the optical sky. In order to achieve the LSST scientific goals, the telescope requires delivering seeing limited image quality over the 3.5 degree field-of-view. Like many telescopes, LSST will use an Active Optics System (AOS) to correct in near real-time the system aberrations primarily introduced by gravity and temperature gradients. The LSST AOS uses a combination of 4 curvature wavefront sensors (CWS) located on the outside of the LSST field-of-view. The information coming from the 4 CWS is combined to calculate the appropriate corrections to be sent to the 3 different mirrors composing LSST. The AOS software incorporates a wavefront sensor estimation pipeline (WEP) and an active optics control system (AOCS). The WEP estimates the wavefront residual error from the CWS images. The AOCS determines the correction to be sent to the different degrees of freedom every 30 seconds. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of the AOS. More particularly, we will focus on the software architecture as well as the AOS interactions with the various subsystems within LSST.

We present two novel designs for a telescope suitable for massively-multiplexed spectroscopy. The first is a very wide field Cassegrain telescope optimised for fibre feeding. It provides a Field Of View (FOV) of 2.5 degrees diameter with a 10m primary mirror. It is telecentric and works at F/3, optimal for fibre injection. As an option, a gravity invariant focus for the central 10 arc-minutes can be added, to host, for instance, a giant integral field unit (IFU). It has acceptable performance in the 360-1300 nm wavelength range. The second concept is an innovative five mirror telescope design based on a Three Mirror Anastigmatic (TMA) concept. The design provides a large FOV in a convenient, gravityinvariant focal plane, and is scalable to a range of telescope diameters. As specific example, we present a 10m telescope with a 1.5 degree diameter FOV and a relay system that allows simultaneous spectroscopy with 10,000 mini-IFUs over a square degree, or, alternatively a 17.5 square arcminutes giant IFU, by using 240 MUSE-type spectrographs. We stress the importance of developing the telescope and instrument designs for both cases.

ASTRI SST-2M is an Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) developed by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, INAF. It is the prototype of the ASTRI telescopes proposed to be installed at the southern site of the Cherenkov Telescope Array, CTA. The optical system of the ASTRI telescopes is based on a dual mirror configuration, an innovative solution for IACTs, and the focal plane of the camera is composed of silicon photo-multipliers (SiPM), a recently developed technology for light detection, that exhibit very fast response and an excellent single photoelectron resolution. The ASTRI camera electronics is specifically designed to directly interface the SiPM sensors, detecting the fast pulses produced by the Cherenkov flashes, managing the trigger generation, the digital conversion of the signals and the transmission of the data to an external camera server connected through a LAN. In this contribution we present the general architecture of the camera electronics developed for the ASTRI SST-2M prototype, with special emphasis to some innovative solutions.

At the core of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) three-mirror optical design is the primary/tertiary (M1M3) mirror that combines these two large mirrors onto one monolithic substrate. The M1M3 mirror was spin cast and polished at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab at The University of Arizona (formerly SOML, now the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona (RFCML)). Final acceptance of the mirror occurred during the year 2015 and the mirror is now in storage while the mirror cell assembly is being fabricated. The M1M3 mirror will be tested at RFCML after integration with its mirror cell before being shipped to Chile.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is under construction for installation on the Mayall 4 Meter telescope. The use of a liquid cooling system is proposed to maintain the DESI prime focus assembly temperature within ±1°C of ambient. Due to concerns of fluid deposition onto optical surfaces from possible leaks, systematic tests were performed of the effects on first surface aluminized mirrors of ethylene glycol and two other candidate coolants. Objective measurement of scattering and reflectivity was an important supplement to visual inspection. Rapid cleanup of a coolant spill followed by a hand wash of the mirror limited surface degradation to the equivalent of a few months of general environmental exposure. Prolonged exposure to corrosive coolants dissolved the aluminum, necesitating mirror recoating.

This paper presents the results of the optical design tradeoff study that result in a reduction in complexity, size and cost of the structure for the sub-millimeter 25 m class CCAT telescope. Four optical configurations are presented; dual reflector Cassegrain and Gregorian options, and Gregorian Nasmyth and quasi-Nasmyth options. All configurations are shown to have diffraction limited performance.

We present an alternative Corrector-ADC design for GMT. The design consists of just 3 silica lenses, of maximum size 1.51m, and includes only a single low-precision asphere for 20' field-of-view, and none for 10'. The polychromatic (360nm-1300nm) image quality is d₈₀<0.043" at zenith and d₈₀<0.20" for ZD<60 degrees. The monochromatic image quality is d₈₀<0.1" everywhere, and typically ~0.05". The ADC action is achieved by tilt and translation of all three lenses; L1 and L2 via simple slide mechanisms each using a single encoded actuator, and L3 via a novel ‘tracker-ball’ support and three actuators. There is also a small motion of M2 via the hexapod, automatically generated by the AGWS system. The ADC action causes a small non-telecentricity, but this is much less than the unavoidable chromatic effects shared with the baseline design. The ADC action also changes the distortion pattern of the telescope, but this can be used positively, to reduce the maximum image motion due to differential refraction by a factor of three. The transmission is superb at all wavelengths, because of the reduced number of air/glass surfaces, and the use only of fused silica.

Holographic optical elements (HOEs) work on the principal of diffraction and can in some cases replace conventional optical elements that work on the principal of refraction. An HOE can be thinner, lighter, can have more functionality, and can be lower cost than conventional optics. An HOE can serve as a beam splitter, spectral filter, mirror, and lens all at the same time. For a single wavelength system, an HOE can be an ideal solution but they have not been widely accepted for multispectral systems because they suffer from severe chromatic aberration. A refractive optical system also suffers from chromatic aberration but it is generally not as severe. To color correct a conventional refractive optical system, a flint glass and a crown glass are placed together such that the color dispersion of the flint and the crown cancel each other out making an achromatic lens (achromat) and the wavelengths all focus to the same point. The color dispersion of refractive lenses and holographic lenses are opposite from each other. In a diffractive optical system, long wavelengths focus closer (remember for HOEs: RBM “red bends more”) than nominal focus while shorter wavelengths focus further out. In a refractive optical system, it is just the opposite. For this reason, diffractives can be incorporated into a refractive system to do the color correction and often cut down on the number of optical elements used [1.]. Color correction can also be achieved with an all-diffractive system by combining a holographic optical element with its conjugate. In this way the color dispersion of the first holographic optical element can be cancelled by the color dispersion of the second holographic optic. It is this technique that will be exploited in this paper to design a telescope made entirely of holographic optical elements. This telescope could be more portable (for field operations) the same technique could be used to make optics light enough for incorporation into a UAV.

In this paper, we describe in detail the optical design of DAG, a new 4 m telescope for Turkey. DAG is an "adaptive optics friendly" telescope, in a sense that each design decision is taken considering the potential impact on the AO performance (vibrations, static aberrations etc.) The objective is to make this telescope fully ready for AO at first light. It is designed as a Ritchey-Chrétien combination, 56 m focal length, with Nasmyth foci only, and active optics. Its total RMS error is expected to be 45 nm up to Zernike mode 78, and 26 nm for the higher, non AO corrected modes. A final design optimization has been done by the telescope manufacturers, demonstrating that our AO-based requirements can be satisfied, without much difficulty.

We propose a novel ground-based meteorological monitoring system. In the 20{30 GHz band, our system simultaneously measures a broad absorption peak of water vapor and cloud liquid water. Additional observation in the 50{60 GHz band obtains the radiation of oxygen. Spectral results contain vertical profiles of the physical temperature of atmospheric molecules. We designed a simple method for placing the system atop high buildings and mountains and on decks of ships. There is a simple optical system in front of horn antennas for each frequency band. A focused signal from a reflector is separated into two polarized optical paths by a wire grid. Each signal received by the horn antenna is amplified by low-noise amplifiers. Spectra of each signal are measured as a function of frequency using two analyzers. A blackbody calibration source is maintained at 50 K in a cryostat. The calibration signal is led to each receiver via the wire grid. The input path of the signal is selected by rotation of the wire grid by 90°, because the polarization axis of the reflected path and axis of the transparent path are orthogonal. We developed a prototype receiver and demonstrated its performance using monitoring at the zenith.

Polarized patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation contains rich knowledge for early stage of the universe. In particular their odd-parity patterns at large angular scale (> 1°), primordial B-modes, are smoking-gun evidence for the cosmic inflation. The GroundBIRD experiment aims to detect these B-modes with a ground-based apparatus that includes several novel devices: a high-speed rotational scan system, cold optics, and microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs). We plan to start observations in the Canary Islands in 2017. In this paper, we present the status of the development of our instruments. We established an environment that allows operation of our MKIDs in an optical configuration, in which the MKIDs observe radiations from the outside of the telescope aperture. We have also constructed MKID prototypes, and we are testing them in the optical configuration.

MSE is a wide field telescope (1.5 square degree field of view) with an aperture of 11.25m. It is dedicated to multi-object spectroscopy at several different spectral resolutions in the range R ~ 2500 - 40000 over a broad wavelength range (0:36 - 1:8μm). MSE enables transformational science in areas as diverse as exoplanetary host characterization; stellar monitoring campaigns; tomographic mapping of the interstellar and intergalactic media; the in-situ chemical tagging of the distant Galaxy; connecting galaxies to the large scale structure of the Universe; measuring the mass functions of cold dark matter sub-halos in galaxy and cluster-scale hosts; reverberation mapping of supermassive black holes in quasars. Here, we summarize the Observatory and describe the development of the top level science requirements and operational concepts. Specifically, we describe the definition of the Science Requirements to be the set of capabilities that allow certain high impact science programs to be conducted. We cross reference these science cases to the science requirements to illustrate the traceability of this approach. We further discuss the operations model for MSE and describe the development of the Operations Concept Document, one of the foundational documents for the project. We also discuss the next stage in the science based development of MSE, specifically the development of the initial Legacy Survey that will occupy a majority of time on the telescope over the first few years of operation.

The Thai National Telescope (TNT) is a Ritchey-Chretien Telescope with a clear aperture ΦM1 = 2.3 m, a focal ratio f/10 and a central obstruction Obsc = 0.3. The TNT is the main instrument of the Thai National Observatory (TNO) which is located near the summit of the Doi Inthanon, situated in the Chiang Mai Province of Thailand at altitude 2,457 meters. The median seeing on this site is approximately 0.9” and is remarkably stable on most nights, rarely exceeding 2”. We decided to develop an optical setup to simulate in laboratory conditions the geometry of the TNT output beam. This, in order to carefully prepare and to improve the efficiency of the test to be performed in real conditions at the TNT focal plane level. We specified the setup to be representative of the TNT optical design, beam aperture, central obscuration, geometry of the spider, wavefront quality and PSF size under various seeing conditions. This setup comprises 2 identical Cassegrain telescopes mounted on dedicated supports with 5 degree-of-Freedom. The first application of this setup will be the preparation of the TNT optical alignment. The second application of this setup will be the development and the test of the future instruments for the TNT such as a focal reducer or a spectrograph. In this paper, we discuss the setup specifications we describe the setup optical and mechanical design and we present the performance.

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the future large observatory in the very high energy (VHE) domain. Operating from 20 GeV to 300 TeV, it will be composed of tens of Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) displaced in a large area of a few square kilometers in both the southern and northern hemispheres. Thanks to the wide energy coverage and the tremendous boost in effective area (10 times better than the current IACTs), for the first time a VHE observatory will be able to detect transient phenomena in short exposures. The CTA/DATA On-Site Analysis (OSA) is the system devoted to the development of dedicated pipelines and algorithms to be used at the CTA site for the reconstruction, data quality monitoring, science monitoring and realtime science alerting during observations. The minimum exposure required to issue a science alert is not a general requirement of the observatory but is a function of the astrophysical object under study, because the ability to detect a given source is determined by the integral sensitivity which, in addition to the CTA Monte Carlo simulations, providing the energy-dependent instrument response (e.g. the effective area and the background rate), requires the spectral distribution of the science target. The OSA integral sensitivity is computed here for the most studied source at Gamma-rays, the Crab Nebula, for a set of exposures ranging from 1000 seconds to 50 hours, using the full CTA Southern array. The reason for the Crab Nebula selection as the first example of OSA integral sensitivity is twofold: (i) this source is characterized by a broad spectrum covering the entire CTA energy range; (ii) it represents, at the time of writing, the standard candle in VHE and it is often used as unit for the IACTs sensitivity. The effect of different Crab Nebula emission models on the CTA integral sensitivity is evaluated, to emphasize the need for representative spectra of the CTA science targets in the evaluation of the OSA use cases. Using the most complete model as input to the OSA integral sensitivity, we obtain a significant detection of the Crab nebula (about 10% of flux) even for a 1000 second exposure, for an energy threshold less than 10 TeV.

The Dish Verification Antenna 1 (DVA-1) is a 15m aperture offset Gregorian radio telescope featuring a rim-supported single piece molded composite primary reflector on an altitude-azimuth pedestal mount. Vibration measurements of the DVA-1 telescope were conducted over three days in October 2014 by NSI Herzberg engineers. The purpose of these tests was to measure the first several natural frequencies of the DVA-1 telescope. This paper describes the experimental approach, in particular the step-release method, and summarizes some interesting results, including unexpectedly high damping of the first mode over a narrow range of zenith angles.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) uses its compact and highly integrated Secondary Mirror Mechanism (SMM) to switch between target positions on the sky in a square wave pattern. This chopping motion excites eigenmodes of the mechanism structure, which limit controller and observatory performance. We present the setup and results of experimental modal tests performed on different building stages of a test-bench model as well as on the original flight hardware. Test results were correlated to simulations employing a finite element model in order to identify excited mode shapes and contributing flexible components of the Secondary Mirror Mechanism. It was possible to isolate the motion of the compensation ring and its elastic mounts as the vibration mode inducing the main disturbance at about 300 Hz, which is currently the main mode shape limiting the performance of the chopping controller.

ASTRI is the end-to-end prototype for the CTA small-size class of telescopes in a dual-mirror configuration (SST-2M) proposed by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in the framework of the Cherenkov Telescope Array. ASTRI SST-2M has been installed at the Serra La Nave Astrophysical Observatory on Mount Etna (Sicily) and its Performance Verification Phase will start in autumn 2016. For the relative pixel calibration and gain monitoring, the ASTRI SST-2M camera is equipped with an internal illumination device, while an external, portable, illumination system, placed at a few km distance from the telescope, will be used for the absolute end-to-end calibration of the telescope spectral response. Moreover analysis of signals induced in the camera pixels by the night sky background (diffuse emission and reference stars) will be used to monitor the long term evolution of the telescope calibration. We present an overview of the ASTRI SST-2M absolute calibration strategy and the external illuminating device that will be used for its spectral calibration

DVA1 (Dish Verification Antenna 1) is a highly innovative rim-supported single-piece composite-material dish radio telescope developed at the National Research Council Canada (NRC). It has a feed-high offset Gregorian optical design with a primary effective diameter of 15 m. DVA1 has been undergoing mechanical and astronomical system tests since 2014. Astronomical measurements were made in L band using a prototype front end developed for MeerKAT by EMSS Antennas (South Africa), including aperture efficiency, beam profiles, sensitivity, and tipping curves. The clean shaped optics, careful attention to feed design, and high sensitivity of the L band receiver (T_rx ~ 6 K) yield a system with high aperture efficiency (~ 0.8), excellent sensitivity (~ 9 m²/K), and low spillover (~ 4 K). Observations of 21 cm atomic hydrogen lines towards standard sources demonstrate the low stray radiation pickup of the antenna. Ku band holography has measured the effective surface accuracy and stability of the dual-reflector antenna. The effective RMS of ~ 0.85 mm implies a Ruze efficiency of ~ 0.88 at 10 GHz and ~ 0.60 at 20 GHz. The surface is stable (~ 10% variation in surface RMS) over the limited range of environmental conditions tested. Testing continues for characterization of pointing, low frequency performance (< 1 GHz), and polarimetric performance. NRC is developing a successor antenna, DVA3, which will have a more accurate surface and be usable at frequencies at least up to Q band (30 – 50 GHz).

This paper describes the strategy to optimize GTC telescope’s optical performance in terms of reflectivity and scattering by means of a suitable combination of mirror coating, CO² and in-situ cleaning. According to our experience, a monthly CO² cleaning was established, except during sporadic dust episodes, when a shorter weekly period is much more appropriate. Trends of the main optical parameters were recorded and analyzed to identify possible causes for the variation of the mirrors performance. As the total reflectivity stems from the combination of three optical surfaces, we set thresholds for the individual components and used these to select the mirrors that have to be replaced and cleaned. We also compared historical data about total reflectivity with optical OSIRIS zeropoints evolution and established a nonlinear relation, that is applicable in the periods where direct measurements on the mirror surface are not feasible. In this line, we are working on an innovative method to estimate the reflectivity for a segmented mirror based on the zeropoints measurement for the individual segments obtained by un-stacking the primary mirror under a controlled pattern.

Low frequency aperture array technology requires advanced ad-hoc tools for performing antenna and array pattern characterization and instrumental calibration. A micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) mounting a radio-frequency transmitting system developed in Italy has demonstrated to satisfy the challenging characteristics of these tasks. Therefore, a measurement campaign by means of this UAV system has been planned to one Dutch station of the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) with the main goal to improve the LOFAR antenna and array models. In preparation for this campaign, some initial tests applying the UAV system to one low-frequency antenna of LOFAR were performed in Italy. This contribution describes this measurement session and shows that the measured antenna gain patterns at different frequencies between 40 and 70 MHz agree very well with the electromagnetic models.

Telescope mirrors reside in harsh environments and thus require periodic re-aluminisation to maintain their reflectivity. The SAAO’s Sutherland field station suffers from dust and frequent bouts of high humidity. Dust settling on the mirrors adheres to the upward-facing optical surfaces and is not removed by CO₂ cleaning. The 74-inch primary mirror was unsuccessfully re-aluminised in April 2015. Parts of the mirror proved difficult to clean and the resulting coating included hazy, white patches in those problem areas. Cotton wool soaked with ferric chloride was used to strip small patches of coating, confirming that no optical surface damage had occurred. The 55 year-old aluminising equipment for the 74-inch required an extensive overhaul and the spruced up system was then used to re-coat the primary mirror in November 2015. We used the same de-ionised water, potassium hydroxide, sodium lauryl sulphate, cotton wool, safety gear and cleaning techniques employed by the mirror coating team at the neighbouring Southern African Large Telescope, as well as their Ocean Optics reflectometer to quantify the improvement in reflectivity. Measurements at 320 nm on different parts of the dirty primary ranged between 10 % and 70 %, while the new coating exceeded 95 % over the entire surface.

In this paper, we present the work on characterization of friction in the 3.6 m Devasthal optical telescope axes. The telescope azimuth axis is supported on a hydrostatic bearing while the altitude and rotator axes are supported on hydrodynamic bearings. Both altitude and azimuth axes are driven directly by high power BLDC motors and the rotator is driven by BLDC motor via a gearbox. This system is designed by AMOS, Belgium and tuned to achieve a tracking accuracy better than 0.1 arcsec RMS. Friction poses control related problems at such low speeds hence it is important to periodically characterize the behaviour at each axes. Compensation is necessary if the friction behaviour changes over the time and starts dominating the overall system response. For identifying friction each axis of telescope is rotated at different constant speeds and speed versus torque maps are generated. The LuGre model for friction is employed and nonlinear optimization is performed to identify the four static parameters of friction. The behaviour of friction for each axis is presented and the results are discussed.

A new technique has been developed to collimate the Gemini telescopes using the Peripheral Wavefront Sensors (PWFS) to measure focal plane offset and tilt. For several years prior to 2014, observers at Gemini North noticed a variation in the focus Zernike term of about ±30 μm when guiding with the PWFS. It was speculated that variation was due to a tilt of the PWFS rotary table. Further testing revealed that it was actually due to an incorrect tilt of the secondary mirror (M2), causing the focal plane to be offset and tilted relative to the PWFS axis. Due to the Ritchey- Chrétien design of the telescopes there is no Seidel comatic field pattern typical of an aligned telescope. Instead a constant comatic field pattern occurs from either tilt or decenter of M2, and patterns arising from tilt can be eliminated with the appropriate decenter. For the Gemini telescopes, proper alignment is not guaranteed from a zero-coma condition. The new technique measures PWFS focus variation around the periphery of the imaging field, 6 arcminutes off-axis, by programming the telescope pointing to move in a circle while PWFS tracks a guide star, completing a full circle. The measured focus variation is then used to calculate M2 tilt. The tilt and decenter offset are then adjusted to zero both focus variation and coma and achieve collimation. The technique permits correction of the erroneous M2 tilt to <~ 30 arcseconds, corresponding to a wavefront error <~ 3 μm, but is limited by short-period focus variations.

In this work we present a simulation of the wave-front sensing of the active primary mirror support for the 2.1-m telescope of the San Pedro Mártir's Observatory by Non-Linear Curvature Wave-front Sensing. The active cell is going to be tested by changing its actuator values. In each active cell state, defocused pupil images from both sides of the focal plane will be simulated and phase retrieval will be performed. The algorithm employed to reconstruct the wave-front will be discussed, as well as the sensitivity obtained in our simulation.

The W. M. Keck Observatory (WMKO) has a good track record at addressing large critical faults which impact observing. Our performance tracking and correcting chronic minor faults has been mixed, yet this class of problems has a significant negative impact on scientific productivity and staff effectiveness. We have taken steps to address this shortcoming. This paper outlines the creation of a program to identify, categorize and rank these chronic operational issues, track them over time, and develop management options for their resolution. The success of the program at identifying these chronic operational issues and the advantages of dedicating observatory resources to this endeavor are presented.

We propose a novel wavefront sensor for radio telescopes with a point diffraction interferometer. A point-like object is set at a pupil plane and the electric field at the focal plane is measured. A receiver dedicated to the novel sensor is prepared which has delay lines to make interferograms. A procedure to estimate the electric field at the pupil is shown analytically. Numerical simulation reveals that the proposed system allows us to measure the phase of the electric field at the pupil with a precision of about λ/28.

Using pseudo-open loop phase maps, reconstructed from deformable mirror commands obtained from the Gemini Planet Imager Adaptive Optics telemetry, estimates are made for the temporal variation of the atmospheric turbulence at Cerro Pachón. The analysis was done by performing Zernike polynomial fits to the instantaneous phase maps to produce Zernike coefficient time series and their corresponding temporal power spectrums. The characteristics of these results were compared to the results obtained from simulated atmospheric turbulence produced by a Kolmogorov atmosphere simulation. A low-frequency variation in the Zernike coefficient time series is observed in the pseudo open-loop phase maps reconstructed from the GPI data, that is not present in the simulation. The effects of this are observed as differences in the relative scale of high and low frequency terms in the power spectral densities.

TNG is a 4m class active optics telescope at the Observatory of Roque de Los Muchachos. In the framework of keeping optimum performances during observation and continuous reliability the telescope control system (TCS) of the TNG is going through a deep upgrade after nearly 20 years of service. The original glass encoders and bulb lamp heads are substituted with modern steel scale drums and scanning units. The obsolete electronic racks and computers for the control loops are replaced with modern and compact commercial drivers with a net improvement in the motors torque ripple. In order to minimize the impact on the number of nights lost during the mechanical and electronic changes in the TCS the new TCS is developed and tested in parallel to the existing one and three steps will be taken to achieve the full upgrade. We describe here the second step that affected the main axes of the telescope, AZ and EL.

Initially the primary mirror of the 3.6m Devasthal Optical Telescope is uncoated polished zerodur glass supplied by Lytkarino Optical Glass Factory, Russia/Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems, Belgium. In order to do the aluminium coating on the primary mirror the coating plant including washing unit is installed near the telescope (extension building of telescope) by Hind High Vacuum (HHV) Bangalore, India. Magnetron sputtering technique is used for the coating. Several coating trials are done before the primary mirror coating; samples are tested for reflectivity, uniformity, adhesivity and finally commissioned. The primary mirror is cleaned, coated by ARIES. We present here a brief description of the coating plant installation, Mirror cleaning and coating procedures and the testing results of the samples.

The Cherenkov Imaging Telescope Integrated Read Out Chip, CITIROC, is the front-end chip of the camera for the ASTRI SST-2M, one of the prototypes for the small sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array, CTA. The telescope, operating in the energy range from a few TeV to beyond 300 TeV, is characterized by innovative technological solutions. The optical system is arranged in a dual-mirror configuration and the focal plane camera consists of a matrix of multi-pixel Silicon Photo-Multipliers. Among others, one of the most important project issue consists in the thermal characterization of the camera that, in the ASTRI SST-2M prototype, is thermo-controlled in a narrow temperature range. A set of at least nine similar telescopes will form the ASTRI mini-array proposed to be installed at the CTA southern site. In the cameras of the ASTRI mini-array telescopes the thermal control could be relaxed with a considerable gain in terms of power consumption, cost and simplicity. So, a study of the temperature dependence of the camera components is needed. The present work addresses this issue showing the results of the measurements carried out on CITIROC as a function of the temperature. We focused our investigation on the pedestal stability, linearity of the charge output signal, preamplifier gain and trigger uniformity in the temperature range 15-30°C. Our results show, for each of the above-mentioned measurable quantities, that temperature dependency is at the level of a few percent.

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET)†, located in West Texas at the McDonald Observatory, operates with a fixed segmented primary (M1) and has a tracker, which moves the prime-focus corrector and instrument package to track the sidereal and non-sidereal motions of objects. We have completed a major multi-year upgrade of the HET that has substantially increased the pupil size to 10 meters and the field of view to 22 arcminutes by deploying the new Wide Field Corrector (WFC), new tracker system, and new Prime Focus Instrument Package (PFIP). The focus of this paper is on the delivery, installation, and on-sky verification of the WFC. We summarize the technical challenges encountered and resolutions to overcome such challenges during the construction of the system. We then detail the transportation from Tucson to the HET, on-site ground verification test results, post-installation static alignment among the WFC, PFIP, and M1, and on-sky verification of alignment and image quality via deploying multiple wavefront sensors across 22 arcminutes field of view. The new wide field HET will feed the revolutionary new integral field spectrograph called VIRUS, in support of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX), a new low resolution spectrograph (LRS2), an upgraded high resolution spectrograph (HRS2), and later the Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF).

In order to study some special solar activities, such as the emergence, evolution and disappearance progress of the sunspot and magnetic flux, and the key role of magnetic field, a new 1.8-meter size high-resolution solar telescope —the CLST will be built in the Institute of Optics and Electronics(IOE), Chinese Academy of Science(CAS), which locates in Chengdu, China. The CLST has a classic Gregorian configuration, alt-azimuth mount, retractable dome. Besides that, a large mechanical de-rotator will be used to cancel the image rotation, and finally it will cooperate with another kind of mechanical de-rotator to cancel both of the pupil rotation and image rotation. Φ3 arc-minute field of view will help the CLST to observe the whole solar activity region, and if necessary the FOV can be enlarged to Φ 6 arc-minute. A 1.8m primary mirror with honeycomb sandwiches structure made by using ULE material will reduce about 70% of weight. Thermal controlling system will also be equipped for the CLST, which including Heat-Stop, primary mirror, tube truss, mount and the other optics elements. An experimental system for validating thermal controlling of primary mirror and Heat-Stop has been built, and the temperature tracking results will be illustrated in this paper. Currently, we have finished the detailed design of the CLST, and some important components also have been manufactured and finished. In this paper, we describe some important progresses and the latest status of the CLST project during these two years.

A near-field millimeter-wave holography system operating in the 3-mm waveband have been developed as a prototype for DATE5, a 5-m terahertz telescope proposed to be deployed at Dome A, Antarctica. Experimental measurements at 92 GHz have been made on a 1.45-m test antenna. During the night time at which the ambient temperature doesn’t vary rapidly, a 75-minute repeatability (repeating measurement 3 times) of ~2.3 μm rms has been achieved with an aperture resolution of 46 mm. A local surface change of known value is correctly detected. After long-time repeating measurements, thermal-induced feed displacement is also detected with an accuracy of approximately 20 μm. Random error factors of the experiment system are evaluated and their contributions to the derived surface error are also simulated, showing that relative poor pointing of the test antenna is the major factor limiting the measurement repeatability.

The azimuth rotation part of a large aperture radio telescope usually takes one wheel-rail system; therefore, wheel-rail pointing errors and wheel-rail wear are very important to antenna point accuracy. First, this paper discusses the wheelrail contact theory and some specific characteristics of wheel-rail system in large aperture radio telescope. Second, one 3D model of wheel-rail contact system is built according to the parameters of 50m antenna in China, and the model is analyzed by one whole body in MSC.Patran/Nastran. Third, we use the multi-body dynamic method to build the model of wheel-rail and simulate it in RecurDyn software. Comparing the simulation results, we find that the coupling of rigidbody and soft-body is much more precise than one whole body in describing the contact deformation. And the results also explain the crevice’s influence on the mechanical properties of wheel-rail contact system. Finally, some experiments and measurements of 50m antenna are made, by which we get some useful tips for large aperture radio telescope. The test results show that the multi-body dynamic method is much more suitable to the mechanical analysis in wheel-rail contact system.

In recent years the V. M. Blanco 4-m telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) has been renovated for use as a platform for a completely new suite of instruments: DECam, a 520-megapixel optical imager, COSMOS, a multi-object optical imaging spectrograph, and ARCoIRIS, a near-infrared imaging spectrograph. This has had considerable impact, both internally to CTIO and for its wider community of observers. In this paper, we report on the performance of the renovated facility, ongoing improvements, lessons learned during the deployment of the new instruments, how practical operations have adapted to them, unexpected phenomena and subsequent responses. We conclude by discussing the role for the Blanco telescope in the era of LSST and the new generation of extremely large telescopes.

AMOS SA has been awarded of the contract for the design, manufacturing, assembly, tests and on site installation (Devasthal, Nainital in central Himalayan region) of the 3.6 m Indo-Belgian Devasthal Optical Telescope (IDOT). The telescope has Ritchey-Chrétien optical configuration with one axial and two side Cassegrain ports. The meniscus primary mirror is active and it is supported by pneumatic actuators. The azimuth axis system is equipped with hydrostatic bearing. After successful factory acceptance at AMOS SA, the telescope has been dismounted, packed, transported, and remounted on site. This paper provides the final performances (i.e. image quality, pointing and tracking) measured during sky tests at Devasthal Observatory.

Considerable effort has gone into improving the performance and reliability of the SAAO’s 74-inch telescope. This included replacing the telescope encoders, refining the pointing model and increasing the telescope throughput. The latter involved re-aluminising the primary and formulating a procedure to ensure optimal alignment of the telescope mirrors. To this end, we developed the necessary hardware and techniques to ensure that such alignment is achieved and maintained, particularly following re-aluminising of the mirrors. In essence, the procedure involves: placing a Taylor Hobson Alignment Telescope on the mechanical rotation axis of the 74-inch (which we define to be the optical axis, since the Cassegrain instruments attach to the associated turntable), then adjusting the tip/tilt of the secondary mirror to get it onto that axis and, lastly, adjusting the tip/tilt of the primary mirror to eliminate coma. An eyepiece (or wavefront camera) is installed at the Cassegrain port for this final step since comatic star images indicate the need to tip/tilt the primary mirror to align it to the secondary. Tuning out any brightness gradients seen in an out-of-focus image of a bright star may also be used for feedback when adjusting the tip/tilt of the primary mirror to null coma.

The Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) is a network of three new 1.6-m, wide-field telescopes spread over three different sites in Chile, South Africa and Australia. Each telescope is equipped with a four square degree wide-field CCD camera, making the KMTNet an ideal facility for discovering and monitoring early supernovae and other rapidly evolving optical transients by providing 24-hour continuous sky coverage. We describe our inaugurating program of observing supernovae and optical transients using about 20% of the KMTNet time in 2015−2019. Our early results include detection of infant supernovae, novae and peculiar transients as well as numerous variable stars and low surface brightness objects such as dwarf galaxies.

We make a detailed quantitative comparison of the wavefront recovery algorithms between those developed for Dark Energy Camera (DECam) and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Samples used in this study include images of out of focus stars collected by the DECam at the Blanco 4-meter telescope and artificial simulated donut images. The data from DECam include wavefront images collected by the wavefront sensors and out-of-focus images where the entire DECam sensor array is used. For simulated images, we have used both the forward Fraunhofer diffraction and a LSST-like ZEMAX optical model where the images are convolved with Kolmogorov atmosphere. All samples are analyzed with the forward wavefront retrieval algorithm developed for DECam and the transport of intensity algorithm for LSST. Good quantitative agreement between results by the two implemented algorithms is observed.

For large telescopes, like the Very Large Telescope (VLT) unit telescopes, it is compulsory to use an effective and reliable Active Optics system in order to guarantee the optimal optical performance. The active optics ensures that the actual wavefront aberrations introduced by the telescope itself are kept as low as possible. In order to evaluate the longterm performance of this system, an extended timeseries data analysis for all four unit telescopes (UT) was performed. The results presented in this paper demonstrate that the VLT UT active optics system works very stable and reliable with no significant performance degradation over time.

The Large Binocular Telescope Observatory is a collaboration between institutions in Arizona, Germany, Italy, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Virginia. The telescope uses two 8.4-m diameter primary mirrors mounted sideby- side on the same AZ-EL mount to produce a collecting area equivalent to an 11.8-meter aperture. Adaptive optics loops are routinely closed with natural stars on both sides for sided and combined beam observations. Rayleigh laser guide stars provide GLAO seeing improvement. With the telescope now in operation for 10 years, we report on various statistics of telescope performance and seeing-limited image quality. Statistics of telescope performance are reported in the areas of off-axis guiding, open-loop mount tracking, active optics and vibration. Delivered image quality is reported as measured by the DIMM and several guide cameras as a function of other parameters such as temperature and wind velocity. Projects to improve image quality and dome seeing are underway.

The Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOMP) team is developing the Giant Steerable Science Mirror (GSSM) for Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) which will enter the preliminary design phase in 2016. The GSSM is the tertiary mirror of TMT and consists of the world’s largest flat telescope mirror (approximately 3.4m X 2.4 m X 100mm thick) having an elliptical perimeter positioned with an extremely smooth tracking and pointing mechanism in a gravity-varying environment. In order to prepare for developing this unique mirror system, CIOMP has been developing a 1/4 scale, functionally accurate version of the GSSM prototype during the pre-construction phase of GSSM. The prototype will incorporate the same optomechanical system and servo control system as the GSSM. The size of the prototype mirror is 898.5mm×634mm×12.5mm with an elliptical perimeter. The mirror will be supported axially by an 18 point whiffletree and laterally with a 12 point whiffletree. The main objective of the preconstruction phase includes requirement validation and risk reduction for GSSM and to increase confidence that the challenge of developing the GSSM can be met. The precision mechanism system and the optical mirror polishing and testing have made good progress. CIOMP has completed polishing the mirror, the prototype mechanism is nearly assembled, some testing has been performed, and additional testing is being planned and prepared. A dummy mirror is being integrated into the cell assembly prototype to verify the design, analysis and interface and will be used when testing the prototype positioner tilt and rotation motions. The prototype positioner tilt and rotator structures have been assembled and tested to measure each subsystem’s jitter and dynamic motion. The mirror prototype has been polished and tested to verify the polishing specification requirement and the mirror manufacturing process. The complete assembly, integration and verification of the prototype will be soon finished. Final testing will verify the prototype requirements including mounted mirror surface figure accuracy in 5 different orientations; rotation and tilt motion calibration and pointing precision; motion jitter; and internally generated vibrations. CIOMP has scheduled to complete the prototype by the end of July 2016. CIOMP will get the sufficient test results during the pre-construction phase to prepare to enter the preliminary design for GSSM.

The QUIJOTE (Q-U-I JOint TEnerife) experiment is a scientific collaboration, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), with the aim of measuring the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in the frequency range 10-40 GHz and at large angular scales (around 1°). The project is composed of 2 telescopes and 3 instruments, located in Teide Observatory (Tenerife, Spain). Idom´s contribution for this project is divided in two phases. Phase I consisted on the design, assembly and factory testing of the first telescope (2008), the integration and functional tests for the 5 polarimeters of the first instrument (2009), and the design and construction supervision of the building which protects both telescopes (2009), including the installation and commissioning of the mechanism for domes apertures. Phase II comprised the design, factory assembly and testing, transport and final commissioning on site of the second telescope, which finished in January 2015. The optical design of both telescopes should allow them to reach up to 200 GHz. The required opto-mechanical performance was checked under nominal conditions, reaching a pointing and tracking accuracy lower than 5 arcsec in both axes, 8 times better than specified. Particular inspections and tests were carried out for critical systems, as the rotary joint that transmits fluid, power and signal to the rotary elements, or for the safety system to ensure personnel and hardware protection under emergency conditions. This paper contains a comprehensive description of the power electronics and acquisition/control design required for safely operation under nominal and emergency conditions, as well as a detailed description of the factory and observatory tests required for the final acceptance of the telescope

The telescope of the University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory has a primary mirror with a diameter in 6.5m. In order to fabricate the reflecting film initially on the mirror surface and to maintain its optical performance over a long period, we have a mirror-coating facility being installed at the summit of Co. Chajnantor (5,640m). The facility consists of a clean booth for stripping off the old film, a mirror coating chamber, and a cart with a lifter for handling the primary mirror. A conventional evaporation system with a metal pre-wetted filament array is adopted for achieving various optical requests. Among the many development items, the fabrication of the transportation and lifting cart has been already completed. It has efficient performance in load capacity (>60 tons) and maximum lifting height (1,750 mm). A cleaning machine having injection nozzles that can realize an efficient and safe cleaning sequence also been completed. A test of the evaporation system using dedicated filaments and filament boxes, which are customized to the TAO's requirements, has shown a uniform coating on a test mirror. An array pattern of the filaments has also been decided based on the coating tests to satisfy the optical specification of the telescope. A detailed design of the main chamber has been almost completed, it is only waiting for the production in the near future.

The Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) reached its full operational capability in 2014 and takes off from the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center to explore the universe about three times a week. Maximizing the program's scientific output naturally leaves very little flight time for implementation and test of improved soft- and hardware. Consequently, it is very important to have a comparable test environment and infrastructure to perform troubleshooting, verifications and improvements on ground without interfering with science missions. SOFIA's Secondary Mirror Mechanism is one of the most complex systems of the observatory. In 2012 a first simple laboratory mockup of the mechanism was built to perform basic controller tests in the lower frequency band of up to 50Hz. This was a first step to relocate required engineering tests from the active observatory into the laboratory. However, to test and include accurate filters and damping methods as well as to evaluate hardware modifications a more precise mockup is required that represents the system characteristics over a much larger frequency range. Therefore the mockup has been improved in several steps to a full test environment representing the system dynamics with high accuracy. This new ground equipment allows moving almost the entire secondary mirror test activities away from the observatory. As fast actuator in the optical path, the SMM also plays a major role in SOFIA's pointing stabilization concept. To increase the steering bandwidth, hardware changes are required that ultimately need to be evaluated using the telescope optics. One interesting concept presented in this contribution is the in- stallation of piezo stack actuators between the mirror and the chopping mechanism. First successful baseline tests are presented. An outlook is given about upcoming performance tests of the actively controlled piezo stage with local metrology and optical feedback. To minimize the impact on science time, the laboratory test setup will be expanded with an optical measurement system so that it can be used for the vast majority of testing.

The Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT) is located in Puebla, Mexico, at an altitude of 4580 m. It is currently the largest single-dish telescope constructed to observe the Universe at wavelengths between 0.85 and 4 mm. Identifying interstellar molecules, exploring dense dark clouds, and understanding the properties of cold matter and interstellar dust in the local and distant Universe are among its main scientific goals. Since June 2013, the LMT has conducted four shared-risk early science campaigns* observing at 1.1 mm (AzTEC), and 3 mm (RSR) with the aid of a new meteorological and radiometer system to guide the flexibility scheduling of observing time. Here we report measurements of the atmospheric opacity taken with this radiometer at 225 GHz between June 2013 and April 2016. These measurements show that the LMT site has exceptional weather conditions with opacities < 0:06 25% of its observing time during the driest months of December, January and February, excellent weather conditions with opacities < 0:1 50% of the same time, and opacities below 0.28 80% of the time during the entire dry season, making it a very convenient site for sub-millimeter/millimeter astronomy.

We present the status of site testing being done at and near the US Naval Observatory's Flagstaff Station (NOFS). Differential image motion monitors (DIMM) will be used to measure r₀, the Fried seeing parameter, at each candidate site. DIMM results will be correlated with image quality as measured by the NOFS 1.55-m telescope. In addition, sky darkness measurements will be made and analysis of water column measurements made nearby by NOAA will be discussed. Site history, measurement methodology, and preliminary results will be presented.

By collecting metrics in fleet operations, data center usage, employee air travel and facilities consumption at the Canada France Hawaii Telescope, the collective impact of CFHT and other observatories on the Maunakea Astronomy Precinct can be estimated. An audit of carbon emissions in these aspects as well as specific efficiency metrics such as data center Power Use Efficiency gives a general scale of environmental and social alterations. Applications of the audit would be for such things as crafting sustainability strategies.

Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is the world’s largest millimeter/ submillimeter (mm / Submm) interferometer. Along with science observations, ALMA has performed several long baseline campaigns in the last 6 years to characterize and optimize its long baseline capabilities. To achieve full long baseline capability of ALMA, it is important to understand the characteristics of atmospheric phase fluctuation at long baselines, since it is believed to be the main cause of mm/submm image degradation. For the first time, we present detailed properties of atmospheric phase fluctuation at mm/submm wavelength from baselines up to 15 km in length. Atmospheric phase fluctuation increases as a function of baseline length with a power-law slope close to 0.6, and many of the data display a shallower slope (02.-03) at baseline length greater than about 15 km. Some of the data, on the other hand, show a single slope up to the maximum baseline length of around 15 km. The phase correction method based on water vapor radiometers (WVRs) works well, especially for cases with precipitable water vapor (PWV) greater than 1 mm, typically yielding a 50% decrease or more in the degree of phase fluctuation. However, signicant amount of atmospheric phase fluctuation still remains after the WVR phase correction: about 200 micron in rms excess path length (rms phase fluctuation in unit of length) even at PWV less than 1 mm. This result suggests the existence of other non-water-vapor sources of phase fluctuation. and emphasizes the need for additional phase correction methods, such as band-to-band and/or fast switching.

Development of the high-speed and reliable space laser communication systems is of current interest for the space instrumentation. Thus, it is necessary to test working characteristics of the terminals on the ground during adjustment and verification. The goal of the work is to develop the control and verification equipment (CVE) intended for the laboratory testing of the space optical communication line (SOCL) and to prove the ability of performing of precision angular measurements in presence of the atmosphere. CVE consists of two blocks, the first block should form the ideal plane wavefront of the 250 mm diameter, the nonuniformity of the intensity along the diameter is not greater than 40%. The laser sources with the wavelength of 1,53 and 1.57 microns are used. The second part of the system forms the reference point and at the same time the light spot on the detector matrix to control the accuracy of the guiding. To check out of the CVE system the working model was created. The main algorithms of the adjustment and self-test were tested. The statistical characteristics of the laser beam with the diameter of 50 – 200 mm passed through the 40-m air layer in enclosed laboratory conditions were measured. With the results obtained the conclusions of the ability of the complex tests of the SOCL apparatus in the laboratory conditions were made.

From its long expertise in Atmospheric Optics, the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur and the J.L. Lagrange Laboratory have equipped the Calern Observatory with a station of atmospheric turbulence measurement (CATS: Calern Atmospheric Turbulence Station). The CATS station is equipped with a set of complementary instruments for monitoring atmospheric turbulence parameters. These new-generation instruments are autonomous within original techniques for measuring optical turbulence since the first meters above the ground to the borders of the atmosphere. The CATS station is also a support for our training activities as part of our Masters MAUCA and OPTICS, through the organization of on-sky practical works.

A special 2-m Ring Solar Telescope (2-m RST) is to be built by YNAO-Yunnan Astronomical Observatory, Kunming, China. Its distinct primary mirror is distinctively shaped in a ring with an outer diameter of 2.02 m and a ring width of 0.35 m. Careful calculation and optimization of the mirror support pattern have been carried out first of all to define optimum blank parameters in view of performance balance of support design, fabrication and cost. This paper is to review the special consideration and optimization of the support design for the unique ring mirror. Schott zerodur is the prevailing candidate for the primary mirror blank. Diverse support patterns with various blank thicknesses have been discussed by extensive calculation of axial support pattern of the mirror. We reached an optimum design of 36 axial supports for a blank thickness of 0.15 m with surface error of ~5 nm RMS. Afterwards, lateral support scheme was figured out for the mirror with settled parameters. A classical push-and-pull scheme was used. Seeing the relative flexibility of the ring mirror, special consideration was taken to unusually set the acting direction of the support forces not in the mirror gravity plane, but along the gravity of the local virtual slices of the mirror blank. Nine couples of the lateral push-pull force are considered. When pointing to horizon, the mirror surface exhibits RMS error of ~5 nm with three additional small force couples used to compensate for the predominant astigmatism introduced by lateral supports. Finally, error estimation has been performed to evaluate the surface degradation with introduced errors in support force and support position, respectively, for both axial and lateral supports. Monte Carlo approach was applied using unit seeds for amplitude and position of support forces. The comprehensive optimization and calculation suggests the support systems design meet the technic requirements of the ring mirror of the 2-m RST.

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) Observatory is under construction at Haleakalā, Maui, Hawai’i. When complete, the DKIST will be the largest solar telescope in the world. The Facility Management System (FMS) is a subsystem of the high-level Facility Control System (FCS) and directly controls the Facility Thermal System (FTS). The FMS receives operational mode information from the FCS while making process data available to the FCS and includes hardware and software to integrate and control all aspects of the FTS including the Carousel Cooling System, the Telescope Chamber Environmental Control Systems, and the Temperature Monitoring System. In addition it will integrate the Power Energy Management System and several service systems such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), the Domestic Water Distribution System, and the Vacuum System. All of these subsystems must operate in coordination to provide the best possible observing conditions and overall building management. Further, the FMS must actively react to varying weather conditions and observational requirements. The physical impact of the facility must not interfere with neighboring installations while operating in a very environmentally and culturally sensitive area. The FMS system will be comprised of five Programmable Automation Controllers (PACs). We present a pre-build overview of the functional plan to integrate all of the FMS subsystems.

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is a 4-meter solar telescope under construction at Haleakala, Hawaii. The challenge of the DKIST optical alignment is the off-axis Gregorian configuration based on an Altitude-Azimuth mount, the independently-rotating Coudé platform and the large number of relay mirrors. This paper describes the optical alignment plan of the complete telescope, including the primary 4.24-m diameter off-axis secondary mirror, the secondary 620 mm diameter off-axis mirror, the transfer optics and the Coudé optics feeding the wavefront correction system and the science instruments. A number of accurate metrology instruments will be used to align the telescope and to reach the performances, including a laser tracker for initial positioning, a theodolite for accurate tilt alignment, a Coordinate Measurement Machine (CMM) arm for local alignment in the Coudé laboratory, and a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor to characterize the aberrations by measuring selected target stars. The wavefront will be characterized at the primary focus, the Gregorian focus, the intermediate focus and at the telescope focal plane. The laser tracker will serve also to measure the mirrors positions as function of Altitude angle due to the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) structure deflection. This paper describes also the method that will be used to compute the compensating mirrors shift and tilt needed to correct the residual aberrations and position of the focal plane.

The Coronal Solar Magnetism Observatory Large Coronagraph (COSMO-LC) is a 1.5 meter Lyot coronagraph dedicated to measuring magnetic fields and plasma properties in the solar corona. The COSMO-LC will be able to observe coronal emissions lines from 530-1100 nm using a filtergraph instrument. COSMO-LC will have a 1 degree field of view to observe the full solar corona out to 1 solar radius beyond the limb of the sun. This presented challenges due to the large Etendue of the system. The COSMO-LC spatial resolution is 2 arc-seconds per pixel (4k X 4k). The most critical part of the coronagraph is the objective lens that is exposed to direct sunlight that is five orders of magnitude brighter than the corona. Therefore, it is key to the operation of a coronagraph that the objective lens (O1) scatter as little light as possible, on order a few parts per million. The selection of the material and the polish applied to the O1 are critical in reducing scattered light. In this paper we discuss the design of the COSMO-LC and the detailed design of the O1 and other key parts of the COSMO-LC that keep stray light to a minimum. The result is an instrument with stray light below 5 millionths the brightness of the sun 50 arc-seconds from the sun. The COSMO-LC has just had a Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and the PDR design is presented.

As far as pointing is concerned, a solar telescope is merely an ordinary astronomical telescope but with enhancements for observing solar and coronal features. The paper discusses the additional coordinate systems that need to be supported, shows how to generate the required solar ephemerides (both orbital and physical), and sets out a suitable application programming interface for the telescope control system to use when making solar observations.

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) completed the first phase of its TCS upgrade in early 2015. Prior to this effort, the previous version of CFHTs TCS was largely unmodified since it began operation in 1979 and had begun to exhibit reliability and maintainability issues entering its third decade of operation. The first phase consisted of replacing the custom-built servo control hardware built by the Canadian Marconi Company with an off-the-shelf Delta Tau Systems Power PMAC and replacing the absolute and incremental encoders with modern equivalents. Adapting the motion control algorithms used within the Power PMAC for real-time control of the telescope on the sky posed unique challenges. This work brie y summarizes the design for the upgraded TCS at CFHT, describes the solutions that adapted the traditional use of the Power PMAC for use at CFHT, and discusses the improved performance of CFHTs new TCS in terms of decreased time to target and tracking error.

After 7 years of operation, the GTC 10.4m ground optical telescope, still has areas of improvement in crucial services like Time Synchronization. This paper discusses the difficulties of discovering the origins and effects of issues, during simultaneous event control, in a highly distributed environment, where actions on different subsystems have to be precisely synchronized; the importance of the final delivery phase in a development process; the applied solutions and future improvements.

The University of Hawai’i 2.2m telescope at Maunakea has operated since 1970, and has had several controls upgrades to date. The newest system will operate as a distributed hierarchy of GNU/Linux central server, networked single-board computers, microcontrollers, and a modular motion control processor for the main axes. Rather than just a telescope control system, this new effort is towards a cohesive, modular, and robust whole observatory control system, with design goals of fully robotic unattended operation, high reliability, and ease of maintenance and upgrade.

The highest sky quality demands for astronomical research impose to locate observatories often in areas not easily reached by the existing power infrastructures. At the same time, availability and cost of power is a primary factor for sustainable operations. Power may also be a potential source for CO2 pollution. As part of its green initiatives, ESO is in the process of replacing the power sources for its own, La Silla and Paranal-Armazones, and shared, ALMA, installations in Chile in order to provide them with more reliable, affordable, and smaller CO2 footprint power solutions. The connectivity to the Chilean interconnected power systems (grid) which is to extensively use Non-Conventional Renewable Energy (NCRE) as well as the use of less polluting fuels wherever self-generation cannot be avoided are key building blocks for the solutions selected for every site. In addition, considerations such as the environmental impact and - if required - the partnership with other entities have also to be taken into account. After years of preparatory work to which the Chilean Authorities provided great help and support, ESO has now launched an articulated program to upgrade the existing agreements/facilities in i) the La Silla Observatory, from free to regulated grid client status due to an agreement with a Solar Farm private initiative, in ii) the Paranal-Armazones Observatory, from local generation using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to connection to the grid which is to extensively use NCRE, and last but not least, in iii) the ALMA Observatory where ESO participates together with North American and East Asian partners, from replacing the LPG as fuel for the turbine local generation system with the use of less polluting natural gas (NG) supplied by a pipe connection to eliminate the pollution caused by the LPG trucks (currently 1 LPG truck from the VIII region, Bio Bio, to the II region, ALMA and back every day, for a total of 3000km). The technologies used and the status of completion of the different projects, as well as the expected benefits are discussed in this paper.

The THEMIS solar telescope is building a classical adaptive optics (AO) system to be operating on the Sun in 2017. To make compatible its excellent dual beam spectropolarimetric features with the AO also requires a major refurbishment of the relay optics starting at the M2 and down to the spectrograph entrance. This paper presents the design parameters and expected performances of our AO system, and explains why and how we intend to control to a few percent the Mueller matrix of the whole optical path from the prime focus to the spectropolarimetric cameras. This project is co-funded by the European Union SOLARNET Project Ref.:312495, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory's 27 antenna Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (NRAO VLA) has been successfully transitioned to a broadband system. As part of this transition, the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) worked with NRAO to develop, install, and commission a new commensal low frequency system on the VLA. The VLA Low-band Ionosphere and Transient Experiment (VLITE) has dedicated samplers and uses spare NRAO optical fibers to transmit the signal from 10 low band receivers on VLA antennas to a dedicated real-time DiFX correlator. For these 10 antennas, this observing mode provides simultaneous data from both the low frequency receivers through the VLITE correlator and from the VLA higher frequencies receivers (1􀀀50 GHz) through the NRAO WIDAR correlator. During the first 1.5 years of operation, VLITE recorded data at roughly 70% wall-time, providing 64 MHz of bandwidth centered at 352 MHz with 2s sample time and 100 kHz spectral resolution. VLITE operations require no additional resources from the VLA system and greatly expand the capabilities of the VLA through value-added PI science, stand-alone astrophysics, the opening of a new window on transient searches, and serendipity. We present an overview of the VLITE program, discuss the sky coverage and depth obtained during the first 1.5 years of operation, and brie y outline a possible path forward to a full 27 antenna LOw Band Observatory (LOBO) which could run commensally with all VLA operations.

The LSST communications middleware is based on a set of software abstractions; which provide standard interfaces for common communications services. The observatory requires communication between diverse subsystems, implemented by different contractors, and comprehensive archiving of subsystem status data. The Service Abstraction Layer (SAL) is implemented using open source packages that implement open standards of DDS (Data Distribution Service1) for data communication, and SQL (Standard Query Language) for database access. For every subsystem, abstractions for each of the Telemetry datastreams, along with Command/Response and Events, have been agreed with the appropriate component vendor (such as Dome, TMA, Hexapod), and captured in ICD's (Interface Control Documents).The OpenSplice (Prismtech) Community Edition of DDS provides an LGPL licensed distribution which may be freely redistributed. The availability of the full source code provides assurances that the project will be able to maintain it over the full 10 year survey, independent of the fortunes of the original providers.

An observatory system like the VLT/I requires careful scientific planning for operations and future instruments. Currently the ESO optical/near-infrared facilities include four 8m telescopes, four (movable) 1.8m telescopes used exclusively for interferometry, two 4m telescopes and two survey telescopes. This system offers a large range of scientific capabilities and setting the corresponding priorities depends good community interactions. Coordinating the existing and planned instrumentation is an important aspect for strong scientific return. The current scientific priorities for the VLT and VLTI are pushing for the development of the highest angular resolution imaging and astrometry, integral field spectroscopy and multi-object spectroscopy. The ESO 4m telescopes on La Silla will be dedicated to time domain spectroscopy and exo-planet searches with highly specialized instruments. The next decade will also see a significant rise in the scientific importance of massive ground and space-based surveys. We discuss how future developments in astronomical research could shape the VLT/I evolution.

Polarimetry of planets and planetary systems provide unique information on physics and chemistry of planetary atmospheres. We have built a new instrument, GREGOR Planet Polarimeter (GPP), which includes fast polarimetric modulation, high-rate readout CCD, and adaptive optics. It operates at the solar telescope GREGOR on Tenerife, Canary Islands, and it benefits from the possibility to calibrate the entire optical train after the secondary mirror. Here we present the instrument design, performance tests, and first scientific data. This research is supported by the ERC Advanced Grant HotMol.

Space observations of fainter and more distant astronomical objects constantly require telescope primary mirrors with a larger size. The diameter of monolithic primary mirrors is limited to 10 m because of manufacturing and logistics limitations. For space telescopes, monolithic primary mirrors are limited to less than 5 m due to fairing capacity. Segmented primary mirrors thus constitute an alternative solution to deal with the steadily increase of the primary mirror size. The optical path difference between the individual segments must be close to zero (few nm) in order to be diffraction limited over the full telescope aperture. In this paper a new system that may co-phase 7 segments at once with the light of a star and without artificial one is proposed. First the measuring methods and feedback system is explained, then the breadboard setup is presented and the results are analyzed and discussed, finally a comparison with Keck telescope is performed. This system can be adapted in order to be used in the co-phasing system of future segmented mirrors, its dynamic range starts from several hundred of microns till some tenths of nanometers

We describe design modifications to the SOAR telescope intended to reduce the impact of future major earthquakes, based on the facility’s experience during recent events, most notably the September 2015 Illapel earthquake. Specific modifications include a redesign of the encoder systems for both azimuth and elevation, seismic trigger for the emergency stop system, and additional protections for the telescope secondary mirror system. The secondary mirror protection may combine measures to reduce amplification of seismic vibration and “fail-safe” components within the assembly. The status of these upgrades is presented.

MonoEthylene glycol coolant is used extensively on the Southern African Large Telescope to cool components inside the telescope chamber. To prevent coolant leaks from causing serious damage to electronics and optics, a Glycol Leak Detection System was designed to automatically shut off valves in affected areas. After two years of research and development the use of leaf wetness sensors proved to work best and is currently operational. These sensors are placed at various critical points within the instrument payload that would trigger the leak detector controller, which closes the valves, and alerts the building management system. In this paper we describe the research of an initial concept and the final accepted implementation and the test results thereof.

The MROI - Magdalena Ridge Interferometer is a project which comprises an array of up to 10 1.4m diameter mirror telescopes arranged in a “Y” configuration. Each of these telescopes will be housed inside a Unit Telescope Enclosure (UTE) which are relocatable onto any of 28 stations. EIE GROUP Srl, Venice – Italy, was awarded the contract for the design, the construction and the erection on site of the MROI by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. The close-pack array of the MROI - including all 10 telescopes, several of which are at a relative distance of less than 8m center to center from each other - necessitated an original design for the Unit Telescope Enclosure (UTE). This innovative design enclosure incorporates a unique dome/observing aperture system to be able to operate in the harsh environmental conditions encountered at an altitude of 10,460ft (3,188m). The main characteristics of this Relocatable Enclosure Dome are: a Light insulated Steel Structure with a dome made of composites materials (e.g. glass/carbon fibers, sandwich panels etc.), an aperture motorized system for observation, a series of louvers for ventilation, a series of electrical and plants installations and relevant auxiliary equipment. The first Enclosure Dome is now under construction and the completion of the mounting on site id envisaged by the end of 2016. The relocation system utilizes a modified reachstacker (a transporter used to handle freight containers) capable of maneuvering between and around the enclosures, capable of lifting the combined weight of the enclosure with the telescope (30tons), with minimal impacts due to vibrations.

The response of the SOAR telescope to the September 2015 Illapel earthquake is documented and placed in the context of other recent, nearby seismic events. Accelerometer data collected on the telescope during these events suggest that observed intensities due to events occurring to the south of the SOAR telescope site are higher than predicted by simple models. Amplification of accelerations occurs at several places within the telescope system, most notably the telescope top end and secondary mirror assembly, and the azimuth encoder system. Damage in these areas is described, and an overview of the earthquake recovery effort is presented.

The Gamma-ray Cherenkov Telescope (GCT) is proposed for the Small-Sized Telescope component of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). GCT's dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) optical system allows the use of a compact camera with small form-factor photosensors. The GCT camera is ~ 0:4 m in diameter and has 2048 pixels; each pixel has a ~ 0:2° angular size, resulting in a wide field-of-view. The design of the GCT camera is high performance at low cost, with the camera housing 32 front-end electronics modules providing full waveform information for all of the camera's 2048 pixels. The first GCT camera prototype, CHEC-M, was commissioned during 2015, culminating in the first Cherenkov images recorded by a SC telescope and the first light of a CTA prototype. In this contribution we give a detailed description of the GCT camera and present preliminary results from CHEC-M's commissioning.

The QiTai radio Telescope（QTT） has completed the conceptual design phase and several key-point researches in the next phase have already begun. Analyses show that the antenna meets the requirements for electrical performance and pointing accuracy specified in the objectives of the phase with highest degree. However, several challenges for structure design remain. In this paper, we will outline the challenges in antenna structure design including antenna weight vs. stiffness, reflector and alidade connecting, reflector surface dividing, actuator, azimuth track, etc. and discuss current progress on resolving these issues.

The Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) will aim to detect occultations of stars by small (~1 km diameter) objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. Such events are very rare (< 10⁻³ events per star per year) and short in duration (~200 ms), so many stars must be monitored at a high readout cadence. TAOS II will operate three 1.3 meter telescopes at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional at San Pedro Mártir in Baja California, México. With a 2.3 square degree field of view and a high speed camera comprising CMOS imagers, the survey will monitor 10,000 stars simultaneously with all three telescopes at a readout cadence of 20 Hz. Construction of the site began in the fall of 2013, and the survey will begin in the summer of 2017.

We report the results of a multi-year program to measure the vibration characteristics of the two Gemini telescopes. Measurements with fast-guiding wavefront sensors and networks of accelerometers show a correlation between image motion and optical vibrations induced mostly by instrument cryocoolers. We have mitigated the strongest vibrations by fast-guiding compensation and active cancellation of vibration sources.

The 25 European antennas of ALMA were delivered by ESO to the ALMA project in Chile between April 2011 and September 2013. Their combined time of operation is already significant and allows us to draw conclusions regarding their ability to fulfil the original specification, in terms of both scientific performance and operational availability. In this paper, we will summarize the experience gained during the past five years of operation. We will characterize the performance of the antennas in routine operation and compare with the data obtained during acceptance testing. We will also describe the few technical issues experienced while operating at 5000m and the way in which these were treated during these first years of operation. We will evaluate the effective reliability obtained in service based on field data and draw some conclusions as to the way in which reliability and maintainability aspects were covered during the process which led to the final design of the antenna. We will discuss the smart use of software to handle redundancy in a flexible way and to exclude failed components without affecting overall antenna operability. The use of low-level diagnostics enabled by remote access allows us to shorten the trouble-shooting cycle and to optimise physical interventions on the antennas. Finally, the paper will cover Antenna maintenance manuals edited using an industrial interactive standard. It will be explained why this advanced and innovative concept has not achieved the success that was expected, and why the traditional form is preferred at the ALMA Observatory.

Currently, more and more telescopes were built and installed in Dome A of Antarctic. The telescopes are remote controlled, unattended operation due to Dome A’s environment. These telescopes must be work successfully at least one year without any failure. According to past experience, the power supply system is the weakest point in whole system. The telescopes have to stop if the power system have a problem, even a minor problem. So the high requirement for power supply system are presented. The requirement include high reliability, the self-diagnosis and perfect monitor system. Furthermore, the optic telescope only can work at night. The power source mainly relay on diesel engine. To protect the Antarctic environment and increase the life of engines. The power capacity is limited during observation. So it need the power supply system must be high power factor, high efficient. To meet these requirement, one power supply system was design and built for Antarctic telescope. The power supply system have the following features. First, we give priority to achieve high reliability. The reliability of power system was calculated and the redundant system is designed to make sure that the spare one can be work immediately when some parts have problems. Second, the perfect monitor system was designed to monitor the voltage, current, power and power factor for each power channel. The status of power supply system can be acquired by internet continuously. All the status will be logged in main computer for future analysis. Third, the PFC (Power Factor Correction) technology was used in power supply system. This technology can dramatically increase the power factor, especially in high power situation. The DC-DC inverter instead of AC-DC inverter was used for different voltage level to increase the efficient of power supply.

The Telescopio San Pedro Mártir project intends to construct a 6.5m telescope to be installed at the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in the Sierra San Pedro Mártir in northern Baja California, Mexico. The project is an association of Mexican institutions, lead by the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica and the Instituto de Astronomía at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, in partnership with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the University of Arizona’s Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory. The project is currently in the planning and design stage. Once completed, the partners plan to operate the MMT and TSPM as a binational astrophysical observatory.

In the framework of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Observatory, the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) has recently inaugurated in Sicily (Italy), at the Serra La Nave astronomical site (on the slopes of Mount Etna), a dual-mirror prototype (ASTRI SST-2M) of the CTA small size class of telescopes. It is planned to install up to 70 small size telescopes in the southern CTA site, in order to allow the study of the gamma rays from a few TeV up to hundreds of TeV. The ASTRI SST-2M telescope prototype has been developed following an end-to-end approach. According to this philosophy, the telescope includes structure, primary and secondary mirrors, camera, software and hardware for control/acquisition and data handling. The camera, almost completed, has been designed to cover a field of view of 9.6 degrees. After the full implementation of the prototype, a remarkable improvement in terms of technology advancement and performance will come from the operation of the ASTRI mini-array, led within the CTA collaboration by INAF in synergy with the Universidade de Sao Paulo (Brazil) and the North-West University (South Africa). The ASTRI mini-array will be composed of at least 9 ASTRI SST-2M units and it is proposed to be installed at the CTA southern site as part of its pre-production phase. Apart from the assessment of a number of technological aspects related to CTA, the ASTRI mini-array will extend and improve the flux sensitivity compared with the current experiments (HESS, MAGIC and VERITAS) in the 5 - 300 TeV energy range.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is the world's largest millimeter/submillimeter telescope and provides unprecedented sensitivities and spatial resolutions. To achieve the highest imaging capabilities, interferometric phase calibration for the long baselines is one of the most important subjects: The longer the baselines, the worse the phase stability becomes because of turbulent motions of the Earth's atmosphere, especially, the water vapor in the troposphere. To overcome this subject, ALMA adopts a phase correction scheme using a Water Vapor Radiometer (WVR) to estimate the amount of water vapor content along the antenna line of sight. An additional technique is phase referencing, in which a science target and a nearby calibrator are observed by turn by quickly changing the antenna pointing. We conducted feasibility studies of the hybrid technique with the WVR phase correction and the antenna Fast Switching (FS) phase referencing (WVR+FS phase correction) for the ALMA 16 km longest baselines in cases that (1) the same observing frequency both for a target and calibrator is used, and (2) higher and lower frequencies for a target and calibrator, respectively, with a typical switching cycle time of 20 s. It was found that the phase correction performance of the hybrid technique is promising where a nearby calibrator is located within roughly 3◦ from a science target, and that the phase correction with 20 s switching cycle time significantly improves the performance with the above separation angle criterion comparing to the 120 s switching cycle time. The currently trial phase calibration method shows the same performance independent of the observing frequencies. This result is especially important for the higher frequency observations because it becomes difficult to find a bright calibrator close to an arbitrary sky position. In the series of our experiments, it is also found that phase errors affecting the image quality come from not only the water vapor content in the lower troposphere but also a large structure of the atmosphere with a typical cell scale of a few tens of kilometers.

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project aims at building the world’s largest radio observatory to observe the sky with unprecedented sensitivity and collecting area. In the first phase of the project (SKA1), an array of dishes, SKA1-MID, will be built in South Africa. It will consist of 133 15m-dishes, which will include the MeerKAT array, for the 0.350-20 GHz frequency band observations. Each antenna will be provided with a local monitor and control system (LMC), enabling operations both to the Telescope Manager remote system, and to the engineers and maintenance staff; it provides different environment for the telescope control (positioning, pointing, observational bands), metadata collection for monitoring and database storaging, operational modes and functional states management for all the telescope capabilities. In this paper we present the LMC software architecture designed for the detailed design phase (DD), where we describe functional and physical interfaces with monitored and controlled sub-elements, and highlight the data flow between each LMC modules and its sub-element controllers from one side, and Telescope Manager on the other side. We also describe the complete Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) created in order to optimize resources allocation in terms of calculus and memory, able to perform required task for each element according to the proper requirements. Among them, time response and system reliability are the most important, considering the complexity of SKA dish network and its isolated placement. Performances obtained by software implementation using TANGO framework will be discussed, matching them with technical requirements derived by SKA science drivers.

In order to make a large area survey, detect a large scale structure and understand dark energy, a large radio interference array with a large number of feeds is required. However, cost and deformation control are main considerations in designing a large antenna array. In this paper we designed a cylinder parabolic structure for antenna array 45m x 40m of "Tianlai" project in Xinjiang, China in 2015. In order to largely reduce weight and cost, the antenna was divided into many assemble units, their structure was optimized by MSC.Patran/Nastran and their reflector deformation under various load cases of gravity, snow and wind was analyzed. For the feed support, we compared different types of structure such as arch-bridge, tower, cable and pole, and by mechanical simulations we found that the arch-bridge structure is very helpful to achieve large span, decrease weight and improve stability, for example, the total weight of optimized structure can be reduced to 43.7% of before. Finally some deformation measurement and experiment methods were discussed, which can be extended to array 100m×100m in the future.

The Hydrogen Intensity and Real-time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX) is a new 400{800MHz radio interferometer under development for deployment in South Africa. HIRAX will comprise 1024 six meter parabolic dishes on a compact grid and will map most of the southern sky over the course of four years. HIRAX has two primary science goals: to constrain Dark Energy and measure structure at high redshift, and to study radio transients and pulsars. HIRAX will observe unresolved sources of neutral hydrogen via their redshifted 21-cm emission line (`hydrogen intensity mapping'). The resulting maps of large-scale structure at redshifts 0.8{2.5 will be used to measure Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). BAO are a preferential length scale in the matter distribution that can be used to characterize the expansion history of the Universe and thus understand the properties of Dark Energy. HIRAX will improve upon current BAO measurements from galaxy surveys by observing a larger cosmological volume (larger in both survey area and redshift range) and by measuring BAO at higher redshift when the expansion of the universe transitioned to Dark Energy domination. HIRAX will complement CHIME, a hydrogen intensity mapping experiment in the Northern Hemisphere, by completing the sky coverage in the same redshift range. HIRAX's location in the Southern Hemisphere also allows a variety of cross-correlation measurements with large-scale structure surveys at many wavelengths. Daily maps of a few thousand square degrees of the Southern Hemisphere, encompassing much of the Milky Way galaxy, will also open new opportunities for discovering and monitoring radio transients. The HIRAX correlator will have the ability to rapidly and efficiently detect transient events. This new data will shed light on the poorly understood nature of fast radio bursts (FRBs), enable pulsar monitoring to enhance long-wavelength gravitational wave searches, and provide a rich data set for new radio transient phenomena searches. This paper discusses the HIRAX instrument, science goals, and current status.

The concept of super-resolution refers to various methods for improving the angular resolution of an optical imaging system beyond the classical diffraction limit. In optical microscopy, several techniques have been developed with the aim of narrowing the central lobe of the illumination Point Spread Function (PSF). In Astronomy a few methods have been proposed to achieve reflector telescopes and antennas with resolution significantly better than the diffraction limit but, to our best knowledge, no working system is in operation. A possible practical approach consists of using the so-called "Toraldo Pupils" (TPs) or variable transmittance filters. These pupils were introduced by G. Toraldo di Francia in 1952,¹ and consist of a series of discrete, concentric circular coronae providing specific optical transparency and dephasing in order to engineer the required PSF. The first successful laboratory test of TPs in the microwaves was achieved in 2003,² and in the present work we build upon these initial measurements to perform electromagnetic (EM) numerical simulations of TPs, using a commercial full-wave software tool. These simulations were used to study various EM effects that can mask and/or affect the performance of the pupils and to analyze the near-field as well as the far-field response. Our EM analysis confirms that at 20 GHz the width of the central lobe in the far-field generated by a TP significantly decreases compared to a clear circular aperture with the same diameter.

We investigate AM/PM distortion models and compare them with baseband (BB) Volterra models. We show that the AM/PM model can be considered a special case of memoryless baseband Volterra models, and that adding memory can improve modeling accuracy by allowing the simulation of more complex nonlinearities. We report models of an LNA, a downconversion mixer, an upconversion mixer, and one class-AB Power Amplifier. All circuits are simulated using the 45nm STMicroelectronics CMOS process with Virtuoso, while the PA, with discrete devices, is simulated using ADS. Adding memory improves performance at the expense of increased numerical complexity: this makes real-time simulation and real-time calibration more expensive, so that there is a trade-off between complexity and accuracy or linearity (after calibration). Foreground calibration’s techniques only require the real-time computation of the correction (inverse) system’s output, whereas background calibration also requires the real-time estimation of the model coefficients, so the relevant complexity is that which is required during correction.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Project is a global science and engineering project realizing the next-generation radio telescopes operating in the metre and centimetre wavelengths regions. This paper addresses design concepts of the broadband, exceptionally sensitive receivers and reflector antennas deployed in the SKA1-Mid radio telescope to be located in South Africa. SKA1-Mid (350 MHz – 13.8 GHz with an option for an upper limit of ~24 GHz) will consist of 133 reflector antennas using an unblocked aperture, offset Gregorian configuration with an effective diameter of 15 m. Details on the unblocked aperture Gregorian antennas, low noise front ends and advanced direct digitization receivers, are provided from a system design perspective. The unblocked aperture results in increased aperture efficiency and lower side-lobe levels compared to a traditional on-axis configuration. The low side-lobe level reduces the noise contribution due to ground pick-up but also makes the antenna less susceptible to ground-based RFI sources. The addition of extra shielding on the sub-reflector provides a further reduction of ground pick-up. The optical design of the SKA1-Mid reflector antenna has been tweaked using advanced EM simulation tools in combination with sophisticated models for sky, atmospheric and ground noise contributions. This optimal antenna design in combination with very low noise, partially cryogenic, receivers and wide instantaneous bandwidth provide excellent receiving sensitivity in combination with instrumental flexibility to accommodate a wide range of astronomical observation modes.

Dogu Anatolu Gözlemevi (DAG-Eastern Anatolia Observatory) Project is a 4m class optical, near-infrared Telescope and suitable enclosure which will be located at an altitude of ~3.170m in Erzurum, Turkey. The DAG telescope is a project fully funded by Turkish Ministry of Development and the Atatürk University of Astrophysics Research Telescope - ATASAM. The Project is being developed by the Belgian company AMOS (project leader), which is also the optics supplier and EIE GROUP, the Telescope Main Structure supplier and responsible for the final site integration. The design of the Telescope Main Structure fits in the EIE TBO Program which aims at developing a Dome/Telescope systemic optimization process for both performances and competitive costs based on previous project commitments like NTT, VLT, VST and ASTRI. The optical Configuration of the DAG Telescope is a Ritchey-Chretien with two Nasmyth foci and a 4m primary thin mirror controlled in shape and position by an Active Optic System. The main characteristics of the Telescope Main Structure are an Altitude-Azimuth light and rigid structure system with Direct Drive Systems for both axis, AZ Hydrostatic Bearing System and Altitude standard bearing system; both axes are equipped with Tape Encoder System. An innovative Control System characterizes the telescope performance.

We have built a control system for a mini survey facility dedicated to photometric monitoring of nearby bright (K<5) stars in the near-infrared region. The facility comprises a 4-m-diameter rotating dome and a small (30-mm aperture) wide-field (5 × 5 sq. deg. field of view) infrared (1.0–2.5 microns) camera on an equatorial fork mount, as well as power sources and other associated equipment. All the components other than the camera are controlled by microcomputerbased I/O boards that were developed in-house and are in many of the open-use instruments in our observatory. We present the specifications and configuration of the facility hardware, as well as the structure of its control software.

We present the MeerLICHT and BlackGEM telescopes, which are wide-field optical telescopes that are currently being built to study transient phenomena, gravitational wave counterparts and variable stars. The telescopes have 65 cm primary mirrors and a 2.7 square degree field-of-view. The MeerLICHT and BlackGEM projects have different science goals, but will use identical telescopes. The first telescope, MeerLICHT, will be commissioned at Sutherland (South Africa) in the first quarter of 2017. It will co-point with MeerKAT to collect optical data commensurate with the radio observations. After careful analysis of MeerLICHT's performance, three telescopes of the same type will be commissioned in La Silla (Chile) in 2018 to form phase I of the BlackGEM array. BlackGEM aims at detecting and characterizing optical counterparts of gravitational wave events detected by Advanced LIGO and Virgo. In this contribution we present an overview of the science goals, the design and the status of the two projects.

MASCARA, the Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA, is a project aimed at finding exoplanets transiting the brightest stars, in the V = 4 to 8 magnitude range, currently probed neither by space nor by ground based surveys. The target population for MASCARA consists mostly of hot Jupiters, for which the average transit depth is around 1%, and hot Neptunes. In order to achieve consistently a signal-to-noise ratio of better than 100 per hour at magnitude 8, MASCARA is based on three main concepts; simplicity stability and calibration. MASCARA was designed with a minimum number of moving components. Five fixed, shutter-less, Peltier-cooled cameras, fitted with standard Canon 24 mm f/1.4 lenses are operating in a temperature controlled environment. Each camera constantly stares at the same patch of the sky. The exposure time is set to 6.4 seconds, keeping trailing of stars and saturation to a minimum while allowing for continuous exposures. Each camera is connected to its own control and data processing computer, allowing for fully independent operation of each of the cameras. Each camera takes between 4,000 and 7,000 exposures per night, which are reduced locally to produce un-calibrated light curves for the up to ~40,000 pre-selected stars, as well as image stacks of 50 images. For each set of 50 images, astrometry of the solution is verified to monitor drifts in the station. Currently both reduced data as well as raw data (~500 GB/night) are transferred to a central data repository, but for stations with less bandwidth, potentially only the reduced data could be transferred. MASCARA currently only permanently stores the reduced light curves and binned image stacks, deleting the raw images after one month. After transfer, the raw light curves are self-calibrated in batches of 2-4 weeks, removing the spatially varying transmission of the camera, the impact of crowding and spatially variable PSF, and the time variable transmission of the atmosphere. Using a combination of SysRem and flagging of data points that are impacted by known artifacts (moon, sun, clouds, etc.), we have demonstrated a photometric stability of MASCARA down to 0.3% at magnitude V=7.7 within 5.3 minutes.

The TBT project is being developed under ESA's General Studies and Technology Programme (GSTP), and shall implement a test-bed for the validation of an autonomous optical observing system in a realistic scenario within the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). The goal of the project is to provide two fully robotic telescopes, which will serve as prototypes for development of a future network. The system consists of two telescopes, one in Spain and the second one in the Southern Hemisphere. The telescope is a fast astrograph with a large Field of View (FoV) of 2.5 x 2.5 square-degrees and a plate scale of 2.2 arcsec/pixel. The tube is mounted on a fast direct-drive mount moving with speed up to 20 degrees per second. The focal plane hosts a 2-port 4K x 4K back-illuminated CCD with readout speeds up to 1MHz per port. All these characteristics ensure good survey performance for transients and fast moving objects. Detection software and hardware are optimised for the detection of NEOs and objects in high Earth orbits (objects moving from 0.1-40 arcsec/second). Nominal exposures are in the range from 2 to 30 seconds, depending on the observational strategy. Part of the validation scenario involves the scheduling concept integrated in the robotic operations for both sensors. Every night it takes all the input needed and prepares a schedule following predefined rules allocating tasks for the telescopes. Telescopes are managed by RTS2 control software, that performs the real-time scheduling of the observation and manages all the devices at the observatory.¹ At the end of the night the observing systems report astrometric positions and photometry of the objects detected. The first telescope was installed in Cebreros Satellite Tracking Station in mid-2015. It is currently in the commissioning phase and we present here the first results of the telescope. We evaluate the site characteristics and the performance of the TBT Cebreros telescope in the different modes and strategies. Average residuals for asteroids are under 0.5 arcsecond, while they are around 1 arcsecond for upper-MEO* and GEO† satellites. The survey depth is dimmer than magnitude 18.5 for 30-second exposures with the usual seeing around 4 arcseconds.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) has a 10 degrees square field of view which is achieved through a 3 mirror optical system comprised of an 8.4 meter primary, 3.5 meter secondary (M2) and a 5 meter tertiary mirror. The M2 is a 100mm thick meniscus convex asphere. The mirror surface is actively controlled by 72 axial electromechanical actuators (axial actuators). Transverse support is provided by 6 active tangential electromechanical actuators (tangent links). The final design has been completed by Harris Corporation. They are also providing the fabrication, integration and testing of the mirror cell assembly, as well as the figuring of the mirror. The final optical surface will be produced by ion figuring. All the actuators will experience 1 year of simulated life testing to ensure that they can withstand the rigorous demands produced by the LSST survey mission. Harris Corporation is providing optical surface metrology to demonstrate both the quality of the optical surface and the correctablility produced by the axial actuators.

A new method to estimate the Point Spread Function from measurements of optical wavefront is described. We apply this method to images taken with the Dark Energy Camera during the Science Verification period of the Dark Energy Survey, and compare our PSF forward estimator against a conventional PSF interpolation.

A method for fast identification of segments and alignment of the segmented mirrors has been developed and applied for the deformable mirror of the WHT AO system (NAOMI) and for the GTC 36-segment primary mirror. By moving each segment by a known but different amount and in a different direction it is possible to identify many segments simultaneously using a pattern-matching algorithm which finds spots that have moved by a segment-specific vector from one image to another. The method does not need any special optical setup. The applicability of the method for the segmented primary mirrors of future telescopes is discussed.

Alignment and Phasing System (APS) is responsible for the optical alignment via starlight of the approximately 12,000 degrees of freedom of the primary, secondary and tertiary mirrors of Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). APS is based on the successful Phasing Camera System (PCS) used to align the Keck Telescopes. Since the successful APS conceptual design in 2007, work has concentrated on risk mitigation, use case generation, and alignment algorithm development and improvement. Much of the risk mitigation effort has centered around development and testing of prototype APS software which will replace the current PCS software used at Keck. We present an updated APS design, example use cases and discuss, in detail, the risk mitigation efforts.

Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) are the next technological step when considering astrophysical observation. They will provide unprecedented angular resolution, thus improving the imaging capability and hopefully allow the imaging of the first Earth-like exoplanet. For technological and mechanical reasons, the primary mirror of these instruments will have to be segmented. To reach the image quality needed for the most demanding observational programs, the segments must be kept aligned below tens of nm RMS. The development of cophasing technics is of prime importance for the next generation of space- and ground-based segmented telescopes. We propose to describe in this paper a new focal plane cophasing sensor that exploits the scientific image of a coronagraphic instrument to retrieve simultaneously piston and tip-tilt misalignments. It is based on the self- coherent camera (SCC) principle and provides a non-invasive system and an efficient phasing sensor from the image domain. Numerical simulations have successfully demonstrated the proper functioning of this system and its algorithms. Along this, work to implement and test the self-coherent camera - phasing sensor (SCC-PS) is currently ongoing and a first look at the cophasing stage of the Segmented Pupil Experiment for Exoplanet Detection (SPEED) will be proposed.

The Large Millimeter Telescope relies on an active primary surface to achieve its specified surface accuracy. The active primary has two functions: (1) it provides a means to correct the surface for gravitational deformations with changing elevation; and (2) it provides a capability to improve the shape of the surface in real time due to transient effects of thermal gradients within the structure. At LMT, our development work has addressed both problems and in this paper we describe the derivation of the gravity deformation model and the schemes developed to measure and improve the antenna surface during regular scientific observations.

The 25.4m Giant Magellan Telescope consists of seven 8.4 m primary mirror (M1) segments with matching segmentation of the Gregorian secondary mirror (M2). When operating the telescope in the diffraction-limited Adaptive Optics (AO) observing modes, the M1-M2 pairs of segments must be phased to a small fraction of the observing wavelength. To achieve this level of correction, the phasing system uses multiple natural guidestar phasing sensors deployed across the field of view to provide an absolute phasing references to edge sensors bridging the gaps between segments. We will present in this paper the performance characterization of the GMT phasing system based on end-to-end numerical simulations performed with the Dynamic Optical Simulation (DOS) tool, which integrates the optical and mechanical dynamics models of the GMT with the Fourier optics models of AO and phasing sensors. The expected phasing performance under different observing conditions will be presented.

We study a novel focal plane wavefront sensing and active optics control scheme at the VST on Cerro Paranal, an f/5.5 survey telescope with a 1x1 degree field of view and a 2.6m primary mirror. This scheme analyzes the elongation pattern of stellar PSFs across the full science image (256 Mpixels) and compares their second moments with an analytical model based on 5th-order geometrical optics. We consider 11 scalar degrees of freedom in mirror misalignments and deformations (M2 piston, tip/tilt and lateral displacement, detector tip/tilt, plus M1 figure astigmatism and trefoil). Using a numerical optimization method, we extract up to 4000 stars and complete the fitting process in under one minute. We demonstrate successful closed-loop active optics control based on maximum likelihood filtering.

The narrowband phasing algorithm that was originally developed at Keck has largely been replaced by a broad- band algorithm that, although it is slower and less accurate than the former, has proved to be much more robust. A systematic investigation into the lack of robustness of the narrowband algorithm has shown that it results from systematic errors (of order 20 nm) that are wavelength-dependent. These errors are not well-understood at present, but they do not appear to arise from instrumental effects in the Keck phasing cameras, or from the segment coatings. This leaves high spatial frequency aberrations or scattering within 60 mm of the segment edges as the most likely origin of the effect.