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Collaborative development of diffraction-limited beamline optical systems at US DOE light sources
An ongoing collaboration among four US Department of Energy (DOE) National Laboratories has demonstrated key technology prototypes and software modeling tools required for new high-coherent flux beamline optical systems. New free electron laser (FEL) and diffraction-limited storage ring (DLSR) light sources demand wavefront preservation from source to sample to achieve and maintain optimal performance. Fine wavefront control was achieved using a novel, roomtemperature cooled mirror system called REAL (resistive element adjustable length) that combines cooling with applied, spatially variable auxiliary heating. Single-grating shearing interferometry (also called Talbot interferometry) and Hartmann wavefront sensors were developed and used for optical characterization and alignment on several beamlines, across a range of photon energies. Demonstrations of non-invasive hard x-ray wavefront sensing were performed using a thin diamond single-crystal as a beamsplitter
Rocket studies of solar corona and transition region
The XSST (X-Ray Spectrometer/Spectrograph Telescope) rocket payload launched by a Nike Boosted Black Brant was designed to provide high spectral resolution coronal soft X-ray line information on a spectrographic plate, as well as time resolved photo-electric records of pre-selected lines and spectral regions. This spectral data is obtained from a 1 x 10 arc second solar region defined by the paraboloidal telescope of the XSST. The transition region camera provided full disc images in selected spectral intervals originating in lower temperature zones than the emitting regions accessible to the XSST. A H-alpha camera system allowed referencing the measurements to the chromospheric temperatures and altitudes. Payload flight and recovery information is provided along with X-ray photoelectric and UV flight data, transition camera results and a summary of the anomalies encountered. Instrument mechanical stability and spectrometer pointing direction are also examined
An experimental testbed for NEAT to demonstrate micro-pixel accuracy
NEAT is an astrometric mission proposed to ESA with the objectives of
detecting Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zone of nearby solar-type
stars. In NEAT, one fundamental aspect is the capability to measure stellar
centroids at the precision of 5e-6 pixel. Current state-of-the-art methods for
centroid estimation have reached a precision of about 4e-5 pixel at Nyquist
sampling. Simulations showed that a precision of 2 micro-pixels can be reached,
if intra and inter pixel quantum efficiency variations are calibrated and
corrected for by a metrology system. The European part of the NEAT consortium
is designing and building a testbed in vacuum in order to achieve 5e-6 pixel
precision for the centroid estimation. The goal is to provide a proof of
concept for the precision requirement of the NEAT spacecraft. In this paper we
give the basic relations and trade-offs that come into play for the design of a
centroid testbed and its metrology system. We detail the different conditions
necessary to reach the targeted precision, present the characteristics of our
current design and describe the present status of the demonstration.Comment: SPIE proceeding
The PRIMA fringe sensor unit
The Fringe Sensor Unit (FSU) is the central element of the Phase Referenced
Imaging and Micro-arcsecond Astrometry (PRIMA) dual-feed facility and provides
fringe sensing for all observation modes, comprising off-axis fringe tracking,
phase referenced imaging, and high-accuracy narrow-angle astrometry. It is
installed at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and successfully
servoed the fringe tracking loop during the initial commissioning phase. Unique
among interferometric beam combiners, the FSU uses spatial phase modulation in
bulk optics to retrieve real-time estimates of fringe phase after spatial
filtering. A R=20 spectrometer across the K-band makes the retrieval of the
group delay signal possible. The FSU was integrated and aligned at the VLTI in
summer 2008. It yields phase and group delay measurements at sampling rates up
to 2 kHz, which are used to drive the fringe tracking control loop. During the
first commissioning runs, the FSU was used to track the fringes of stars with
K-band magnitudes as faint as m_K=9.0, using two VLTI Auxiliary Telescopes (AT)
and baselines of up to 96 m. Fringe tracking using two Very Large Telescope
(VLT) Unit Telescopes (UT) was demonstrated. During initial commissioning and
combining stellar light with two ATs, the FSU showed its ability to improve the
VLTI sensitivity in K-band by more than one magnitude towards fainter objects,
which is of fundamental importance to achieve the scientific objectives of
PRIMA.Comment: 19 pages, 23 figures. minor changes and language editing. this
version equals the published articl
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR)
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is a NASA Small Explorer
mission that will carry the first focusing hard X-ray (5 -- 80 keV) telescope
to orbit. NuSTAR will offer a factor 50 -- 100 sensitivity improvement compared
to previous collimated or coded mask imagers that have operated in this energy
band. In addition, NuSTAR provides sub-arcminute imaging with good spectral
resolution over a 12-arcminute field of view. After launch, NuSTAR will carry
out a two-year primary science mission that focuses on four key programs:
studying the evolution of massive black holes through surveys carried out in
fields with excellent multiwavelength coverage, understanding the population of
compact objects and the nature of the massive black hole in the center of the
Milky Way, constraining explosion dynamics and nucleosynthesis in supernovae,
and probing the nature of particle acceleration in relativistic jets in active
galactic nuclei. A number of additional observations will be included in the
primary mission, and a guest observer program will be proposed for an extended
mission to expand the range of scientific targets. The payload consists of two
co-aligned depth-graded multilayer coated grazing incidence optics focused onto
solid state CdZnTe pixel detectors. To be launched in early 2012 on a Pegasus
rocket into a low-inclination Earth orbit. Data will be publicly available at
GSFC's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC)
following validation at the science operations center located at Caltech.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Proceedings of the SPIE, Space
Telescopes and Instrumentation 2010: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ra
Development of a Computer Vision-Based Three-Dimensional Reconstruction Method for Volume-Change Measurement of Unsaturated Soils during Triaxial Testing
Problems associated with unsaturated soils are ubiquitous in the U.S., where expansive and collapsible soils are some of the most widely distributed and costly geologic hazards. Solving these widespread geohazards requires a fundamental understanding of the constitutive behavior of unsaturated soils. In the past six decades, the suction-controlled triaxial test has been established as a standard approach to characterizing constitutive behavior for unsaturated soils. However, this type of test requires costly test equipment and time-consuming testing processes. To overcome these limitations, a photogrammetry-based method has been developed recently to measure the global and localized volume-changes of unsaturated soils during triaxial test. However, this method relies on software to detect coded targets, which often requires tedious manual correction of incorrectly coded target detection information. To address the limitation of the photogrammetry-based method, this study developed a photogrammetric computer vision-based approach for automatic target recognition and 3D reconstruction for volume-changes measurement of unsaturated soils in triaxial tests. Deep learning method was used to improve the accuracy and efficiency of coded target recognition. A photogrammetric computer vision method and ray tracing technique were then developed and validated to reconstruct the three-dimensional models of soil specimen
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