INNOVATION July-August 2018

F E A T U R E

“The performance of one subsystem impacts the performance of adjacent subsystems,” says Sightline principal Nathan Loewen, P.Eng. “They’ll be assembled and working in tight spaces on the support structure, so we have to determine with high precision how they will be installed and maintained, and consider access to bolts and other aspects. Each instrument needs to be removable without jeopardizing the rest of the assembly.” When it is complete, NFIRAOS will be the size of a small house. “Structurally, these projects are pushing the limits of what we can do with steel structures using modern

The NRC team is also designing one of those science instruments as part of the NFIRAOS

package. The infra-red imaging spectrometer (IRIS) will capture images and spectra of astronomical objects at resolutions and brightnesses beyond the capabilities of any currently existing instrument. “Imagine NFIRAOS as a pair of

eyeglasses for the telescope,” says astronomer Dr. Luc Simard, who directs the NRC’s Astronomy Technology division, a team of 68 scientists, engineers, technicians,

and support staff based in Victoria and near Penticton, BC. “These super-goggles correct the atmosphere in real time, then feed that to the eyeball. The eyeball, in this case, is IRIS.” The NRC engineers pioneered use

The IRIS assembly will help TMT capture images of unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. IRIS is comprised of a vacuum science dewar (white cylinder), a wavefront sensor (grey hexagon) and mounting struts and snout that connect it to the underside of NFIRAOS.

technologies, based on its properties,” says Loewen, who worked at Dynamic Structures until 2014. “It makes for interesting, challenging work.” The results, says Simard, will be worth it. “Adaptive optics is what is going to make a telescope like TMT reach its full scientific potential. The science we will be able to do will be mind blowing.” The TMT is in the design process, with the telescope likely to see first light in late-2020s.

of adaptive optics for telescopes in the 1980s. They continue to develop the technology. The TMT’s system is the first to be integrated within a large telescope’s design. Earlier telescopes, in contrast, have been retrofitted to use adaptive optics. “If your goal is to use the full potential of adaptive optics for science,” Simard says, “integration is a huge opportunity. But it affects how you design the mirrors of the telescope itself, the enclosure, the telescope. All these things, in addition to the adaptive-optics box itself, are critical to achieving the full potential of adaptive optics.”

NFIRAOS (blue box) and IRIS (grey cylinder with struts) form the heart of the TMT "first light" optics system. Light beams from the telescope enter into NFIRAOS, then pass through its complex maze of mirrors and beamsplitters, and then into the IRIS. I llustrations : N ational R esearch C ouncil of C anada

RADIO-TELESCOPE ENGINEERING Engineers in BC are also

developing cutting-edge technologies for radio telescopes— both for observatories here in the province and elsewhere. While optical telescopes such as TMT collect light with mirrors or lenses, radio telescopes detect radio waves with dishes and antennae. Last October, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), located at the NRC’s Dominion

Creating that box is challenging, too. Sightline Engineering, of North Vancouver, BC, is designing both the supporting structures for all the NFIRAOS instruments and the equipment to move the various instruments around as needed once the telescope is operating.

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