KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Photonics, Spectroscopy, Commercial off the shelf technology, Analog to digital converters, Stars, Observatories, 3D modeling, Mirrors, Design and modelling
The PolyOculus technology, developed by CREOL’s Astrophonics group, creates a large-area-equivalent telescope using fiber optics and a photonic lantern to link several semi-autonomous, small, inexpensive, commercial-off-theshelf telescopes. The Original PolyOculus Array, OPA, will use seven, Celestron 11” telescopes with iOptron centralbalanced equatorial mounts (CEM 70) to create a ~0.75m equivalent optical telescope for spectroscopic follow up observations of astronomical events. This telescope array will include 7 acquisition and guiding systems (one per telescope) to appropriately center and finely focus objects in the telescopes’ field of view along with an atmospheric dispersion corrector for each unit. That light will then be sent through single, multimode, optical fibers (one fiber per telescope) and to a photonic lantern where the light from all seven telescopes will be combined then sent to a spectrograph. The photonic lantern has demonstrated over 91% efficiency in combined optical light. The Original PolyOculus Array will be commissioned and operated at Mount Laguna Observatory in southern California. OPA will be the prototype to an eventual, more numerous PolyOculus driven array and other future PolyOculus arrays with different applications.
The OPA project, the Original PolyOculus Array, uses the PolyOculus technology to create a large-area-equivalent telescope by using fiber optics to link seven semi-autonomous, small, inexpensive, commercial-off-the-shelf telescopes. OPA will use seven, Celestron 11" telescopes with iOptron central-balanced equatorial (CEM 70) mounts to create a 0.74m equivalent optical telescope for spectroscopic follow up observations. This telescope will include 7 acquisition and guiding systems (one per telescope) to appropriately center objects in the telescopes’ field of view along with an atmospheric dispersion corrector for each unit. That light will then be sent through single optical fibers (one fiber per telescope) and to a photonic lantern where the light from all seven telescopes will be combined then sent to a spectrograph. OPA will be commissioned and operated at Mount Laguna Observatory in southern California.
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