The 3,6 m Indo-Belgian Devasthal Optical Telescope: the hydrostatic azimuth bearing

摘要

AMOS SA has been awarded of the contract for the design, manufacturing, assembly, tests and on site installation(Devasthal, Nainital in central Himalayan region) of the 3.6 m Indo-Belgian Devasthal Optical Telescope (IDOT).The telescope has a Ritchey-Chrétien optical configuration with a Cassegrain focus equipped with one axial port andtwo side ports. The primary mirror is a meniscus active mirror. The mount is an Alt-Az type with for the azimuth axis a5 m diameter hydrostatic track. This paper presents the solution adopted by AMOS to meet the specific requirements forthe azimuth axis. The track is designed to be able to control the positioning of the telescope around the azimuth axiswith an accuracy of 0.05 arc second for all tracking configurations. The challenge came from this tight accuracy with amass in rotation weighting 125 tons. The azimuth track was mounted and tested in AMOS workshop; the tests andperformances are also discussed.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.