THURSDAY, Mar 20 , 12 p.m. 11 FLOOR OF THE GAMOW TOWER
Sergio R. Restaino
Naval Research Laboratory
The Naval prototype optical interferometer upgrade with ultra-light telescopes and adaptive optics
The Naval Prototype Optical Interferometer (NPOI) is the largest optical long baseline interferometer in the world. It is currently operating using six 0.5 m siderostat that are stopped down to 0.12 m to avoid atmospheric turbulence problems. In order to increase the overall sensitivity of the instrument we are upgrading the NPOI by developing ultra-light weight Carbon Fiber Reinforce Polymer (CFRP) telescopes. Both the optics and structure are manufactured using the same material. These telescopes have a diameter of 1.4 m. In order to fully take advantage of such aperture increase it is necessary to have adaptive optics. The talk will illustrate the status of our program in both CFRP telescope manufacturing and compact adaptive optics development using Micro-Electro-Machined-Systems (MEMS). Both theoretical and experimental results will be presented with a discussion on some of the lesson learned.