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Large Optical Test And Integration Site
The Large Optical Test and Integration Site, or LOTIS, is a facility at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in Sunnyvale, CA for testing large optical components under realistic conditions. LOTIS has large, thermally stabilized vacuum chamber, vibration-isolated optical benches, and a large 6.5 meter telescope (run backwards as a collimator) to create images for the test optics to view. It can generate images from the visible through the mid-wavelength IR. The fabrication error in the Hubble Space Telescope main mirror is the classic example that shows the need for such testing. In this case, a test facility such as LOTIS was not easily available, so the completed optics were not tested as a unit, and instead relied on careful testing of the individual components. Unfortunately, due to a mis-assembled null corrector A null corrector is an optical device used in the testing of large aspheric mirrors. A spherical mirror of any size can be tested relatively easily using ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lockheed Martin Space Systems
Lockheed Martin Space is one of the four major business divisions of Lockheed Martin. It has its headquarters in Littleton, Colorado, with additional sites in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; Sunnyvale, California; Santa Cruz, California; Huntsville, Alabama; and elsewhere in the United States and United Kingdom. The division currently employs about 16,000 people, and its most notable products are commercial and military satellites, space probes, missile defense systems, NASA's Orion spacecraft, and the Space Shuttle external tank. History The Lockheed Missile Systems Division was established in Van Nuys, Van Nuys, California, in late 1953 to consolidate work on the Lockheed X-17 and Lockheed X-7, X-7. The X-17 was a three-stage solid-fuel research rocket designed to test the effects of high mach atmospheric reentry. The X-17 was also used as the booster for the Operation Argus series of three high-altitude nuclear tests conducted in the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic in 1958. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sunnyvale, CA
Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the north, Moffett Federal Airfield and NASA Ames Research Center to the northwest, Mountain View to the northwest, Los Altos to the southwest, Cupertino to the south, and Santa Clara to the east. Sunnyvale's population was 155,805 at the 2020 census, making it the second most populous city in the county (after San Jose) and the seventh most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. As one of the major cities that make up California's high-tech area known as Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale is the birthplace of the video game industry, former location of Atari headquarters, and the location of a fictional computer game company in the 1983 film ''WarGames''. Many technology companies are headquartered in Sunnyvale and many more operate there, inc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vacuum Chamber
A vacuum chamber is a rigid enclosure from which air and other gases are removed by a vacuum pump. This results in a low-pressure environment within the chamber, commonly referred to as a vacuum. A vacuum environment allows researchers to conduct physical experiments or to test mechanical devices which must operate in outer space (for example) or for processes such as vacuum drying or vacuum coating. Chambers are typically made of metals which may or may not shield applied external magnetic fields depending on wall thickness, frequency, resistivity, and permeability of the material used. Only some materials are suitable for vacuum use. Chambers often have multiple ports, covered with vacuum flanges, to allow instruments or windows to be installed in the walls of the chamber. In low to medium-vacuum applications, these are sealed with elastomer o-rings. In higher vacuum applications, the flanges have knife edges machined onto them, which cut into a copper gasket when the flang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned both as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. The Hubble telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) selects Hubble's targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) controls the spacecraft. Hubble features a mirror, and its five main instruments observe in the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Hubble's orbit outside the distortion of Earth's atmosphere allows it to capture extremely high-resolution images with substantially lower background light than ground-based telescopes. It has recorded some of the most detaile ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Null Corrector
A null corrector is an optical device used in the testing of large aspheric mirrors. A spherical mirror of any size can be tested relatively easily using standard optical components such as laser, mirrors, beamsplitters, and converging lenses. One method of doing this using a ''Shack cube'' is shown at the right, and many other setups are possible. An interferometer test such as this one generates a contour map of the deviation of the surface from a perfect sphere, with the contours in units of half the wavelength used. This is called a ''null test'' because when the mirror is perfect, the result is null (no contours at all). If the result is not null, then the mirror is not perfect, and the pattern shows where the optician should polish the mirror to improve it. However, the mirrors used in modern telescopes are not spherical – they are rotations of parabolas or hyperbolas, since these more complex shapes reduce optical aberrations and give a larger field of view. (See, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Figuring
Figuring is the process of final polishing of an optical surface to remove imperfections or modify the surface curvature to achieve the shape required for a given application. Types An example of figuring is that used in reflecting telescope primary mirrors in a process of converting the smooth spherical mirror produced by earlier stages into the aspherical or parabolic shapes needed to form the correct image. It is done by applying different polishing stroke lengths with different sized and shaped tools. Manual figuring is a very laborious process, since the heat produced by polishing has to be allowed to dissipate before the shape of the mirror can be measured again, and the places for later polishing selected. Testing of the figure is usually done by a Foucault knife-edge test or Ronchi test in amateur telescope making and with very sophisticated null testers on research telescope optics. For large mirrors, ion figuring is often used, in which a beam of neutral atoms is u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mirrors
A mirror or looking glass is an object that Reflection (physics), reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror will show an image of whatever is in front of it, when focused through the lens of the eye or a camera. Mirrors reverse the direction of the image in an equal yet opposite angle from which the light shines upon it. This allows the viewer to see themselves or objects behind them, or even objects that are at an angle from them but out of their field of view, such as around a corner. Natural mirrors have existed since prehistoric times, such as the surface of water, but people have been manufacturing mirrors out of a variety of materials for thousands of years, like stone, metals, and glass. In modern mirrors, metals like silver or aluminium are often used due to their high reflectivity, applied as a thin coating on glass because of its naturally smooth and very Hardness (materials science), hard surface. A mirror is a Wave (physics), wave reflector. Light consis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optics Institutions
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of optical instruments, instruments that use or Photodetector, detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible light, visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties. Most optical phenomena can be accounted for by using the Classical electromagnetism, classical electromagnetic description of light. Complete electromagnetic descriptions of light are, however, often difficult to apply in practice. Practical optics is usually done using simplified models. The most common of these, geometric optics, treats light as a collection of Ray (optics), rays that travel in straight lines and bend when they pass through or reflect from surfaces. Physical optics is a more comprehensive model of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the north, Moffett Federal Airfield and NASA Ames Research Center to the northwest, Mountain View to the northwest, Los Altos to the southwest, Cupertino to the south, and Santa Clara to the east. Sunnyvale's population was 155,805 at the 2020 census, making it the second most populous city in the county (after San Jose) and the seventh most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. As one of the major cities that make up California's high-tech area known as Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale is the birthplace of the video game industry, former location of Atari headquarters, and the location of a fictional computer game company in the 1983 film ''WarGames''. Many technology companies are headquartered in Sunnyvale and many more operate there, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
