U.S. Representative Judy Chu of California visited the TMT Lab in Monrovia in August 2023. TIO Executive Director Bob Kirshner and other project team members were on hand to talk about the project's development and showcase the work going on in the lab.
Sergio Salata, Astronomy Project Manager of Added Value Solutions (AVS) in Tenerife visits the TMT office. Sergio (far-right) joins a group of Caltech astronomy summer undergraduate research students, led by Prof. Matthew Graham (center), Project Scientist for the Zwicky Transient Factory, and visits the TMT lab. in California on 20 July 2023.
TMT edge sensors will align and stabilize the relative out-of-plane degrees of freedom (piston, tip, and tilt) of each 492 hexagonal mirror segment that forms the 30-meter TMT primary mirror.
The sensor dust boots are designed to keep the sensors clean and dry. Functionality of the sensors dust boots is verified on the segments mounted on the Multi Segment Integration & Test facility at TMT lab.
Sr. Optical Engineer & Group Leader of the M1 Optics at ITOFF S. Sriram (from left) along with optics team members Chetan C (Sr. Optics Technician), T. Nataraj (Sr. Optics Technician), Sanjeev Jha (Optical Engineer), Pramod Panchal (Optical Engineer), Remya B S (Sr. Optics Technical Assistant), Devika Divakar (Scientific Associate), Alikhan Basheer (Optical Engineer).
Commissioning of TMT’s Primary Mirror Segment Polishing and Metrology Equipment in India -
The Thirty Meter Telescope is shown at a very low elevation angle. The segmented primary mirror reflects the Milky Way and convex secondary mirror. The tertiary mirror in the center of the primary mirror is oriented to send light to the Wide Field Optical Spectrograph, the gray structure located on the right side of the image. The left and right instrument platforms are seen and the dark blue adaptive optics enclosure is seen on the upper left on the instrument support structure.
An illustration for the US Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP).
TMT’s REFR-A Refrigerant Cooling Unit is placed in the summit utility room and includes the green compressors, red oil separator, condensers, CO2 receiver tank, control electronics etc.
TMT’s main cooling units REFR-A, REFR-S and REFR-H are installed at ground level in the summit observatory utility room. The Refrigeration Cooling System (REFR) also provides all of the CO2 piping that supplies the hydrostatic bearing system heat exchanger, as well as the REFR-A and REFR-S client systems located on the telescope structure.
TMT’s APS includes all the necessary hardware, software, and interfaces to the Telescope Control System and M1, M2, and M3 control systems required to accomplish precise alignment of all TMT’s mirrors. The APS will have the capability to phase the 492 M1 segments so they behave as one unique single mirror of 30 meters in diameter.
A 360-degree rendered panorama of the Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory can be accessed by copying the following link into your browser: https://app.theviewer.co/xQajzZZxFsJ1iMUq9
