• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.307-310
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• 2005

The Solar-B is the third Japanese spacecraft dedicated for solar physics to be launched in summer of 2006. The spacecraft carries a coordinated set of optical, EUV and X-ray instruments that will allow a systematic study of the interaction between the Sun's magnetic field and its high temperature, ionized atmosphere. The Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) consists of a 50cm aperture diffraction limited Gregorian telescope and a focal plane package, and provides quantitative measurements of full vector magnetic fields at the photosphere with spatial resolution of 0.2-0.3 arcsec in a condition free from terrestrial atmospheric seeing. The X-ray telescope (XRT) images the high temperature (0.5 to 10 MK) corona with improved spatial resolution of approximately 1 arcsec. The Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) aims to determine velocity fields and other plasma parameters in the corona and the transition region. The Solar-B telescopes, as a whole, will enable us to explore the origins of the outer solar atmosphere, the corona, and the coupling between the fine magnetic structure at the photosphere and the dynamic processes occurring in the corona. The mission instruments (SOT/EIS/XRT) are joint effort of Japan (JAXA/NAO), the United States (NASA), and the United Kingdom (PPARC). An overview of the spacecraft and its mission instruments are presented.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.72.2-72.2
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• 2013

An off-axis telescope has several advantages in optical performance comparing with a conventional on-axis telescope. However, in general, an off-axis telescope has a narrow field of view due to the linear astigmatism caused by the asymmetric structure. It was shown in the previous work that the linear astigmatism can be eliminated by properly configuring parameters in a confocal off-axis reflector system. Furthermore, the third order aberrations of a confocal off-axis telescope can be minimized by optimizing the shape of the mirrors. Despite many advantages, the confocal off-axis telescopes have been evaded because of difficulties of off-axis mirror fabrication, alignment process and unaccustomed off-axis baffle design. The baffle for the off-axis telescope should be designed considering that the effects of stray lights are different because of the asymmetry of off-axis system. In this poster, the design, manufacturing, and test for the baffle and housing of an off-axis telescope are presented.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.321-328
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• 2012

We have designed a 30 cm cryogenic space infrared telescope for astronomical observation. The telescope is designed to observe in the wavelength range of 0.5~2.1 ${\mu}m$, when it is cooled down to 77 K. The result of the preliminary design of the support structure and support method of the mirror of a 30 cm cryogenic space infrared telescope is shown in this paper. As a Cassegrain prescription, the optical system of a 30 cm cryogenic space infrared telescope has a focal ratio of f/3.1 with a 300 mm primary mirror (M-1) and 113 mm secondary mirror (M-2). The material of the whole structure including mirrors is aluminum alloy (Al6061-T6). Flexures that can withstand random vibration were designed, and it was validated through opto-mechanical analysis that both primary and secondary mirrors, which are assembled in the support structure, meet the requirement of root mean square wavefront error < ${\lambda}/8$ for all gravity direction. Additionally, when the M-1 and flexures are assembled by bolts, the effect of thermal stress occurring from a stainless steel bolt when cooled and bolt torque on the M-1 was analyzed.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.spc1
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• pp.125-133
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• 2003

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), in collaboration with the University of Hawaii (UH), is upgrading Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) by replacing its principal, 65 cm aperture telescope with a modern, off-axis 1.6 m clear aperture instrument from a 1.7 m blank. The new telescope offers a significant incremental improvement in ground-based infrared and high angular resolution capabilities, and enhances our continuing program to understand photospheric magneto-convection and chromospheric dynamics. These are the drivers for what is broadly called space weather - an important problem, which impacts human technologies and life on earth. This New Solar Telescope (NST) will use the existing BBSO pedestal, pier and observatory building, which will be modified to accept the larger open telescope structure. It will be operated together with our 10 inch (for larger field-of-view vector magnetograms, Ca II K and Ha observations) and Singer-Link (full disk H$\alpha$, Ca II K and white light) synoptic telescopes. The NST optical and software control design will be similar to the existing SOLARC (UH) and the planned Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) facility led by the National Solar Observatory (NSO) - all three are off-axis designs. The NST will be available to guest observers and will continue BBSO's open data policy. The polishing of the primary will be done in partnership with the University of Arizona Mirror Lab, where their proof-of-concept for figuring 8 m pieces of 20 m nighttime telescopes will be the NST's primary mirror. We plan for the NST's first light in late 2005. This new telescope will be the largest aperture solar telescope, and the largest aperture off-axis telescope, located in one of the best observing sites. It will enable new, cutting edge science. The scientific results will be extremely important to space weather and global climate change research.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.82-82
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• 2014

One of the subjects in clouds' structure and development is small scale structure of interstellar cloud. The possibility of AU scale structure (Marscher et al. 1993; Moore & Marscher 1995; Roy et al. 2012) is discussed, and this small scale structure is considered as the result of hydrogen volume density (Moore & Marscher 1995), or small-scale chemical and other inhomogeneities (Liszt & Lucas 2000). In order to study this subject with emission line, extremely high resolution is mandatory by VLBI system. However, the alternative method could be observing the absorption line of interstellar cloud on the continuum object. In this case, the resolution would be restricted to the size of the continuum object, if the size of the object is smaller than the resolution of a used telescope. We observed the previous researchers' three objects (BLLAC, NRAO150, B0528+138), whose spectrums are changed from 1993 to 1998 (Liszt & Lucas 2000), with KVN. Through KVN observation, we found the changes of optical depth spectrum compared with the previous spectrums. We will discuss the optical depth spectrum variation by time variation and the meaning of it.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.93.2-93.2
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• 2012

Point Spread Function (PSF) is one of the most important optical characteristics for describing the performance of a telescope. And a concept of subpixelization is inevitable in evaluating the undersampled PSF (Shin and Sakurai 2009). Then, the internal structure of Yohkoh SXT CCD pixel is not uniform: For the top half of pixel area, the X-ray should pass a so-called gate structure where the charges are transferred to an output amplifier. This gate structure shows energy-dependent sensitivity (Tsuneta et al. 1991). For example, for Al-K (8.34 A) X-ray emission, the transmission of the polysilicon gate is about 0.9. Also, for the peak coronal response of the SXT thin filters, around 17 angstrom (0.729 keV), the transmission of the gate is about 0.6, falling off sharply towards longer wavelengths. It should be noted that this spectrally dependent non-uniform response of each CCD pixel will certainly have a noticeable effect on the properties of the PSF at longer wavelengths. Therefore, especially for analyzing the undersampled PSF of low energy source, a careful consideration of non-uniform internal pixel structure is required in determining the shape of the PSF core. The details on the effect of gate structure will be introduced in our presentation.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.38.4-39
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• 2021

The Local Volume Mapper (LVM), for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V, consists of four 16 cm telescopes with three fiber spectrographs in the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. With the fixed telescopes on optical tables, the Alt-Alt mounted siderostats point and guide targets during spectrograph exposures. We are developing the integrated LVM instrument control software. Considering international travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, we decided to make a simplified version of siderostat to test the LVM telescope control system in Korea. The prototype siderostat consists of two aluminum flat mirrors, optomechanical housing structures made by aluminum profiles, and the Planewave L-350 mount. We designed the optical mirrors and the optomechanical structure of the siderostat. From structural analysis at various pointing cases, we estimated the tilt misalignments of mirrors within 4 arcsec, which would affect the telescope pointing errors.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.74-83
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• 2022

The entire process, from the raw material to the final system qualification test, has been developed to fabricate a large-diameter, lightweight reflective-telescope system for a satellite observation. The telescope with 3 anastigmatic mirrors has an aperture of 700 mm and a total mass of 66 kg. We baked a silicon carbide substrate body from a carbon preform using a reaction sintering method, and tested the structural and chemical properties, surface conditions, and crystal structure of the body. We developed the polishing and coating methods considering the mechanical and chemical properties of the silicon carbide (SiC) body, and we utilized a chemical-vapor-deposition method to deposit a dense SiC thin film more than 170 ㎛ thick on the mirror's surface, to preserve a highly reflective surface with excellent optical performance. After we made the SiC mirrors, we measured the wave-front error for various optical fields by assembling and aligning three mirrors and support structures. We conducted major space-environment tests for the components and final assembly by temperature-cycling tests and vibration-shock tests, in accordance with the qualifications for the space and launch environment. We confirmed that the final telescope achieves all of the target performance criteria.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.39.2-39.2
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• 2010

In this paper, I present the domestic development of near infrared camera systems for the ground telescope and the space satellite. These systems are the first infrared instruments made for astronomical observation in Korea. KASINICS (KASI Near Infrared Camera System) was developed to be installed on the 1.8m telescope of the Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory (BOAO) in Korea. KASINICS is equipped with a $512{\times}512$ InSb array enable L band observations as well as J, H, and Ks bands. The field-of-view of the array is $3.3'{\times}3.3'$ with a resolution of 0.39"/pixel. It employs an Offner relay optical system providing a cold stop to eliminate thermal background emission from the telescope structures. From the test observation, limiting magnitudes are J=17.6, H=17.5, Ks=16.1 and L(narrow)=10.0 mag at a signal-to-noise ratio of 10 in an integration time of 100 s. MIRIS (Multi-purpose InfraRed Imaging System) is the main payload of the STSAT-3 in Korea. MIRIS Space Observation Camera (SOC) covers the observation wavelength from $0.9{\mu}m$ to $2.0{\mu}m$ with a wide field of view $3.67^{\circ}{\times}3.67^{\circ}$. The PICNIC HgCdTe detector in a cold box is cooled down below 100K by a micro Stirling cooler of which cooling capacity is 220mW at 77K. MIRIS SOC adopts passive cooling technique to chill the telescope below 200K by pointing to the deep space (3K). The cooling mechanism employs a radiator, a Winston cone baffle, a thermal shield, MLI of 30 layers, and GFRP pipe support in the system. Opto-mechanical analysis was made in order to estimate and compensate possible stresses from the thermal contraction of mounting parts at cryogenic temperatures. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of mechanical structure was also conducted to ensure safety and stability in launching environments and in orbit. MIRIS SOC will mainly perform the Galactic plane survey with narrow band filters (Pa $\alpha$ and Pa $\alpha$ continuum) and CIB (Cosmic Infrared Background) observation with wide band filters (I and H) driven by a cryogenic stepping motor.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.11-22
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• 2022

We introduce the Transformable Reflective Telescope (TRT) kit that applies an aluminum profile as a base plate for precise, stable, and lightweight optical system. It has been utilized for optical surface measurements, developing alignment and baffle systems, observing celestial objects, and various educational purposes through Research & Education projects. We upgraded the TRT kit using the aluminum profile and truss and isogrid structures for a high-end optical test device that can be used for prototyping of precision telescopes or satellite optical systems. Thanks to the substantial aluminum profile and lightweight design, mechanical deformation by self-weight is reduced to maximum 67.5 ㎛, which is an acceptable misalignment error compared to its tolerance limits. From the analysis results of non-linear vibration simulations, we have verified that the kit survives in harsh vibration environments. The primary mirror and secondary mirror modules are precisely aligned within 50 ㎛ positioning error using the high accuracy surface finished aluminum profile and optomechanical parts. The cross laser module helps to align the secondary mirror to fine-tune the optical system. The TRT kit with the precision aluminum mirror guarantees high quality optical performance of 5.53 ㎛ Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) at the field center.