• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.178-183
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• 2009

At the time that the Keck-I 10m telescope was constructed in 1993, the era of Very Large Telescopes (VLTs) was opened. Now thirteen VLTs are in operation, and the largest of the monolithic mirrors is 8.4 m in diameter. Such monolithic mirrors are mostly aspheric and require high accuracies on the surface figures, reaching up to the diffraction limit. At present, next generation telescopes, Giant telescopes, are being developed. One is the GMT (Giant Magellan Telescope) whose size is 25.4 m in diameter. The primary mirror consists of seven segments figuring elliptical shapes on the surface. The surrounding six segments are off-axis and the edges are steep, as the fast focal ratio is adopted. It means that testing of the mirrors is a challenging task. In this paper, testing methods for the GMT primary mirror are reviewed, and accuracy of measuring devices is assessed. Results and discussions follow.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.50.1-50.1
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• 2010

The New Solar Telescope (NST) at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) is the recently constructed world largest 1.6 m optical solar telescope on the ground. We took an observation of the north polar limb in H-alpha line center wavelength on 2009 August 26 with the instrument at Nasmyth focus of the NST and found a remarkable small-scale H-alpha eruption from 18:20 UT and 18:45 UT. The eruption occurred with a relatively slow speed of about 10 km/s in early stage and a slight acceleration up to 20-30 km/s in later stage. We also found that the eruption shows a deflection along the pre-existing magnetic field as well as several interesting features such as bifurcation, rotation, horizontal oscillation, and direction and thickness change of its structure during the eruption. In this talk, we will report the observational properties of the small-scale eruption observed by the NST and discuss their implication on magnetic reconnection.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.57.2-57.2
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• 2017

Remote and robotic telescopes are the most effective instrument for astronomical survey projects. The system is based on the dynamic operation of all astronomical instruments such as dome and telescope control system (TCS), focuser, filter wheel and data taking camera. We adopt the ASCOM driver platform to control the instruments through the integrated software. It can convert different interface libraries from various manufacturers into a uniform standard library. This allows us to effectively control astronomical instruments without modifying codes. We suggest a conceptual design of software for automation of a small telescope such as the new wide-field 0.25m telescope at McDonald Observatory. It can also be applied to operation of multi-telescopes in future projects.

• Proceedings of the Optical Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.08a
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• pp.3-3
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• 2000

Adaptive Optical (AO) technology can compensate for wave-front errors in real-time to improve image and beam quality. The research and development on AO in China began in 1979. In 1980, the first laboratory on AO in China was established in Institute of Optics and Electronics (IOE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Since then several AO systems have been built in this Laboratory. The 19-element system is the first AO system in the world ever used in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) facility in our knowledge. It corrects the static error of this large laser engineering. The 21-element system was firstly tested at the 1.2m telescope of Kunming Observatory in 1990 and then up-dated as an IR AO system installed at the 2.16m telescope of Beijing Observatory. The 37-element system was used with a turbulence cell in Laboratory on Atmospheric Optics in Hefei to conduct elementary research on Atmospheric Optics. The 61-element system for astronomical observation is newly developed. It has been successfully installed at the 1.2m telescope of Kunming Observatory and a laser guide star system will be integrated with the system. A compact AO system using our newly developed miniature DM for high resolution ophthalmic imaging of retina is also being built. The key elements of these AO systems, deformable mirrors and fast-steering mirrors, are all developed in this Laboratory. In this talk, the main configurations of these AO systems, some test results as well as the specifications of these active mirrors will be presented.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.79-79
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• 2011

Using deep images taken at Maidanak 1.5m telescope, at McDonald 2.1m telescope and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, we investigated the fraction of merging galaxies in hosts of 26 AGN which are brighter than M = -22.2 mag and nearer than z = 0.2. We found that 9 to 12 of 26 AGN host galaxies show the evidence of mergers like tidal tail, shell via visual inspection. We also studied with the merging fraction of a control sample, SDSS Stripe82 galaxies. Surface brightness limit and magnitude are similar to that of the AGN sample. We found that merging fraction of the AGN sample is higher than that of normal galaxy samples. This result implies that AGN activity may be correlated with merging. We also investigated the detailed morphology of merging feature. About ~1/4 of control sample classified as a tidal and tidal+dust are shell structures. On the other hand only one of the AGN sample shows shell structures. Almost all merging AGNs show tidal tail features. From point of view that tidal tail may be at the early stage of merging, and shell may be at the late stage of mergers, this result implies that AGN may be evolved into early-type galaxies after merging.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.64.1-64.1
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• 2013

The point spread function (PSF) of an optical system is in general defined as a two-dimensional intensity distribution which results from a single point source at infinity. It is an important key for the evaluation of the optical performance of an astronomical telescope. The PSFs of the soft X-ray telescope (SXT) aboard Yohkoh were measured in a wide range of the field-of-view under the in-flight configuration at White Sands Missile Range prior to launching the satellite. It has been known that the SXT PSF has a sharp peak at the core and the intensity drops very fast as it goes distant from the center. Due to the combination of this sharp peak at the PSF core and the effect of undersampling by a large pixel size, a carefully designed method is requested in the examination of the PSF data. The pattern of the SXT PSF is determined by the fitting of a mathematical functional form to the pre-launch experimental data. The elliptical Moffat function has been adopted for the evaluation of the SXT PSF. It is revealed from our study that the SXT PSF shows a peculiar characteristics, and thus a careful consideration on the undersampling effect and also a proper choice of statistics are necessary for the determination of the best fit function of the PSF. Details on the on- and off-axis SXT PSF in the field-of-view will be introduced and discussed in our presentation.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.64.4-65
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• 2016

Observations of the early photons from evolution of optical afterglows or internal shock provides the crucial clues on the nature of the bursts and environments. Hundreds of GRBs afterglow observations in multi-wavelength region have been made mainly thanks to the fast (~ 60 seconds after the trigger) localisation GRB by Swift and its fast alert to the ground telescope. It helps to improve our understandings tremendously, however many enigmas still remain, such as burst mechanism, transition prompt emission to the afterglow, early optical flash, rise phase of the early optical light curve and some missing afterglows. They could be addressed by fast slewing and multi colour and IR follow-up by future telescopes. The primary aim of UFFO/Lomonosov is to follow up optical fast ever, within a couple of seconds after trigger by onboard X-ray telescope. Its optical FOV is $30{\times}30degrees$. As a key instrument, the Slewing Mirror to redirect the optical beam from GRBs rapidly to the Ritchey-Chretien telescope. The status and launch schedule of the UFFO/Lomonosov and its test performance will be reported and prospects for the next missions will be discussed.

• 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 Journal of the Korean dental association
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• v.26 no.7 s.230
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• pp.607-612
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• 1988

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.38.2-38.2
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• 2006