Alan Ryan (Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii), Jeffrey Morgan (Institute for Astronomy), Walter Siegmund (Institute for Astronomy), Carole Hude (Institute for Astronomy)
Keywords: Pan-STARRS
Abstract:
The Pan-STARRS PS1 telescope is a 1.8m Cassegrain telescope with a 7 square degree field of view and a 1.4 billion pixel CCD camera. The required clear aperture at the filters is 496mm in diameter, and therefore the filters needed are quite large. The Pan-STARRS filter complement consists of six octagonal shaped filters that have a distance between the flats of 538mm and a thickness of 10mm.
The automated mechanism that will move the filters needs to fit into a small area. A filter wheel would be prohibitively large, so the mechanism will consist of three layers with two athermally mounted filters that slide on each layer. Each layer will be identical to the other two to provide interchangeability and commonality in manufacturing. The layers will be stacked and held together with top and bottom cover plates to form a rigid structure. The shutter will be mounted to the bottom of the mechanism and they will be installed as one unit. A separate structure will be utilized to clamp the mechanism to the telescope cassegrain core registration points. This installation system will allow the mechanism to be isolated from other structural loads and be easily removed without affecting the camera. This talk will present the detailed design of the mechanism an its performance to date.
Date of Conference: September 10-14, 2006
Track: Pan-STARRS