Thermal performance and facility seeing at the upgraded 3.8-m UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT)

Timothy G. Hawarden; Andrew J. Adamson; Timothy C. Chuter; Nicholas P. Rees; Richard J. Massey; Charles P. Cavedoni; Eli Ettedgui-Atad

doi:10.1117/12.393905

2 August 2000 Thermal performance and facility seeing at the upgraded 3.8-m UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT)

Timothy G. Hawarden, Andrew J. Adamson, Timothy C. Chuter, Nicholas P. Rees, Richard J. Massey, Charles P. Cavedoni, Eli Ettedgui-Atad

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 4004, Telescope Structures, Enclosures, Controls, Assembly/Integration/Validation, and Commissioning; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.393905
Event: Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 2000, Munich, Germany

Abstract

The upgraded 3.8 m UK Infrared Telescope employs active control of the primary mirror figure and secondary mirror alignment to constrain intrinsic wavefront errors, currently to approximately 180 nm, while a fast guider controls a tip- tilt secondary to remove telescope vibrations and tracking errors. It routinely produces images with FWHM below 0.'5 at 2.2 micrometers wavelength (the K-band). The best fully-sampled image yet recorded has FWHM equals 0.'171 and is believed still to be the best ever achieved by a ground-based telescope without the use of higher-order adaptive optics.

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Timothy G. Hawarden, Andrew J. Adamson, Timothy C. Chuter, Nicholas P. Rees, Richard J. Massey, Charles P. Cavedoni, and Eli Ettedgui-Atad "Thermal performance and facility seeing at the upgraded 3.8-m UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT)", Proc. SPIE 4004, Telescope Structures, Enclosures, Controls, Assembly/Integration/Validation, and Commissioning, (2 August 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.393905

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