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Session 74 - Ground-Based Instruments.
Display session, Wednesday, January 17
North Banquet Hall, Convention Center
Solar Lite is a one meter diameter Gregorian diffraction limited solar telescope using Silicon Carbide optics that is currently being fabricated by the Vavilov Optical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. The mirror is made of a two phase ceramic that is 83% SiC and 17% Si. A 63 cm, f/1.5 test sphere has been fabricated and polished. The test mirror weighs 12 Kg, the surface error 1/40 wave RMS, and the surface roughness is 18 angstroms RMS. The telescope structure is a corrugated aluminum tube (bellows) with Invar stringers. This approach is possible because Russian material technology is capable of producing thin Invar sheets with a coefficient of linear expansion of 3x10^-7. The primary mirror has a design weight of 30 kg and the entire telescope has a total weight of 150 kg. A preliminary design review has been completed. The detailed design of the telescope will be completed in January 1996. We hope to fly the telescope with a vector magnetograph in a sun synchronous orbit. The completion date for the telescope is July 1997.
