RAPID: High-stroke, high-order MEMS deformable mirrors for extremely large telescopes

世界上一些小组正在设计新的“超大型望远镜”。这些elt将拥有前所未有的主镜尺寸（25到42米！）。为了充分利用这些望远镜所能提供的极高的角度分辨率和图像清晰度，有必要对自适应光学（AO）技术进行相当大的升级。AO使天文学家能够纠正来自太空中遥远物体的光穿过地球大气层时产生的扭曲。随着望远镜变得越来越大，AO必须在越来越大的范围内进行校正。此外，由于图像分辨能力随镜像尺寸的变化而变化，因此如果要获得最佳图像，AO技术必须随着镜像尺寸的变化而改进。目前的AO技术已经走过了很长的路，现在已经很成熟和健壮了。但AO与elt的挑战是相当大的。AO系统的一个组成部分是一个“可变形镜”（DM），用于快速（每秒1000次）纠正由大气引入的错误。目前使用的DMs无法进行elt所需的校正。加州大学圣克鲁斯分校的Joel Kubby博士正在开发新的、更大的、反应更灵敏的dm，以满足即将到来的elt需求。库比博士的工作得到了美国国家科学基金会天文科学部通过其先进技术和仪器项目的支持。

New "extremely large telescopes" are being designed by a small number of groups around the world. These ELTs will have primary mirrors of unprecedented sizes (25 to 42 meters!). In order to take advantage of the very high angular resolution and image clarity that these telescopes can deliver, it is necessary to make considerable upgrades to the technology of adaptive optics (AO). AO allows astronomers to correct distortions introduced when the light from distant objects in space passes through the earth's atmosphere. As ttelescopes get larger, the AO must correct over an increasingly large area. Furthermore, since the image resolving capabilities scale with the size of the mirror, the AO techniques must improve along with the mirror size if the best possible images are to be achieved.Current AO technology has come a long way and is now well established and robust. But the challenges for AO with ELTs are considerable. One component of AO systems is a "deformable mirror" (DM) used to rapidly (a thousand times a second) correct the errors introduced by the atmosphere. DMs in use today cannot make the kinds of corrections needed for ELTs. Dr. Joel Kubby of the University of California - Santa Cruz is developing new, larger, and more responsive DMs to meet the coming needs of ELTs. Dr. Kubby's work is supported by NSF's Division of Astronomical Sciences through its Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation program.