The former Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST), now renamed to Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) will be the largest solar telescope in the world – with a 4m aperture primary mirror and a 16m diameter co-rotating “Coudé” laboratory located within the telescope pier. Both, the telescope mount and the Coudé laboratory use for their azimuth axis a new kind of bearing technology, so called R-guides, which minimize later maintenance efforts, avoid energy consumption and the risk of oil spill of conventional hydrostatic bearings. The paper describes the integrated modeling approach for the verification of the challenging DKIST jitter requirement of 0.075 arcsec rms with the new bearing system, including initial system engineering guidelines, finite element evaluations, system dynamics and end-to-end jitter simulations, factory tests of subsystems and components, and the commissioning of the trial assembled Coudé table and later the telescope mount.
Over the past two years, the New York Astronomical Corporation (NYAC), the business arm of the Astronomical Society of New York (ASNY), has continued planning and technical studies toward construction of a 12-meter class optical telescope for the use of all New York universities and research institutions. Four significant technical studies have been performed investigating design opportunities for the facility, the dome, the telescope optics, and the telescope mount. The studies were funded by NYAC and performed by companies who have provided these subsystems for large astronomical telescopes in the past. In each case, innovative and cost effective approaches were identified, developed, analyzed, and initial cost estimates developed. As a group, the studies show promise that this telescope could be built at historically low prices. As the project continues forward, NYAC intends to broaden the collaboration, pursue funding, to continue to develop the telescope and instrument designs, and to further define the scientific mission. The vision of a historically large telescope dedicated to all New York institutions continues to grow and find new adherents.
The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) 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 meter class telescope.
The technology normally used in this class of telescope is well understood in the telescope community and has been
successfully implemented in numerous projects.
The world of large machine tools has developed in a separate realm with similar levels of performance requirement but
different boundary conditions. In addition the competitive nature of private industry has encouraged development and
usage of more cost effective solutions both in initial capital cost and thru-life operating cost.
Telescope mounts move relatively slowly with requirements for high stability under external environmental influences
such as wind buffeting. Large machine tools operate under high speed requirements coupled with high application of
force through the machine but with little or no external environmental influences.
The benefits of these parallel development paths and the ATST system requirements are being combined in the ATST
Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA). The process of balancing the system requirements with new technologies is based
on the experience of the ATST project team, Ingersoll Machine Tools who are the main contractor for the TMA and MT
Mechatronics who are their design subcontractors.
This paper highlights a number of these proven technologies from the commercially driven machine tool world that are
being introduced to the TMA design. Also the challenges of integrating and ensuring that the differences in application
requirements are accounted for in the design are discussed.
The ATST Telescope Mount Assembly uses for the Azimuth axes mechanisms bearing and drive technologies as
developed for the machine tool industry. An overview on the ATST mount project and design and its verification by
analysis, simulation and tests are given in two separate papers of this conference. This paper describes the main design
and accuracy features of the bearing and drive subsystems, their adaption to the ATST mount and their influence on the
telescope structural design, and gives a hint to the challenges in the upcoming manufacturing, installation and
commissioning phases.
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