This page contains some things I found out in the course of time, and have written down in brief articles.
| A telescope primer |
This article is an overview of the things that had to be sorted out when I first started planning a 250mm Newton telescope. The scope itself has never been built, but the text may still be useful for those considering their first ATM telescope building project.
See also the AtmSite.
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| Cell induced deformation |
This analyzes something I've always wondered: what is the effect of torque issued by flotation cell elements that are glued to the mirror? Looking upwards is no problem, but low altitudes lets the mirror hang down from its glue pads. The problem has been modeled with NASTRAN, and the results are presented in the article.
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| Focal plane illumination |
An excercise to calculate the combined effects of vignetting of secondary mirror and front aperture. In principle this could be extended with vignetting by the drawtube or any other circular boundary that might get into the lightpath.
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| Schiefspiegler toolkit |
A summary of Anton Kutters' treaty on two-mirror Tilted Component Telescopes, presented in the form of a design guideline. From the resources page the accompanying Excel spreadsheet can be downloaded.
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| Thermal deformation |
Exploring models that calculate the changing temperature gradients inside a telescope mirror, specifically during the cooldown phase prior to the actual use of the telescope.
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