The SOLARC Offaxis Coronagraphsolarc日冕的离轴.pptVIP

The SOLARC Off-axis Coronagraph Why a ground-based solar coronagraph SOLARC design and performance Future prospects SOHO/LASCO Available Daily Only the magnetic field will tell... Our “dark energy problem” Empirical encouragement 3.9m Eclipse Why an IR (reflecting) off-axis coronagraph? Zeeman magnetic sensitivity Lower scattered sky background Lower scattered instrument optics background Lowered scattered dust background Scattering sources Atmosphere “seeing” aerosols atomic molecular scattering Telescope diffraction mirror roughness mirror dust Atmospheric backgrounds Optical backgrounds SOLARC Reflecting - broadband, IR Off-axis - unobscured, low scattering All major National solar telescope facilities are off-axis or unobscured (Dunn, Evans, McMath) Off-axis telescope “myths” “Aberrations are worse than conventional telescopes” “They can’t be aligned” “Large off-axis mirrors aren’t manufacturable” Aberrations This is not an asymmetric optical system, it is a “decentered” system The full aperture is not illuminated SOLAR-C Optics Linear Alignment Algorithms SOLAR-C before baffling First light images PSPT “blue” disk photometry Measured secondary PSF Green-line coronal photometry Summary The SOLARC off-axis coronagraph on Haleakala is operational Optical fabrication and alignment issues are no more difficult than for a conventional telescope Post-focus instrumentation includes Mid-IR imager Near and mid-IR spectrograph * J.R. Kuhn, R. Coulter, H. Lin, D. Mickey NASA/SRT, UH/IfA, NSF/ATST (from Chen et al., Low, Gibson) Off-band On-band SiIX? Judge et al. claim spectroscopic detection (ApJ, in press) 0.5m 4.0m dy Q f e For small angles, Q, blur is astigmatic and only weakly dependent on off-axis distance. SOLARC is diffraction limited over 15 arcmin field Linear algorithm minizes cos(2theta) and sin(2theta) spot distributions (and rms spot size) while varying M2 tilt and decenter…. Coma and astigmatism easily separated: Starting optical performance ...After