AstroTechTalk – att

Version 303 (modified by Ralph Hofferbert, 7 years ago) (diff)
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The AstroTechTalk (ger) offers a place to discuss, for all interested colleagues and especially for the technical departments, the project leaders, the administration and the scientists as the ultimately users:

status of instrumentation projects
scientific tasks and features of the instruments in construction or planned
new possible involvements
technical innovations and developments
technical problems and their solutions
logistical problems and their solutions
how to improve operation and observation
project standards.

Time: Always Fridays 11:00 - 12:00 (during the construction work: 10:00 - 11:00)

Location: MPIA Hörsaal (during the construction work: HdA Auditorium)

Outline:

Announcements (news, visitors, etc.) (mainly in German)
Talk of about 30 min about a selected topic (German or English, will be announced)
Follow up discussion and questions (German or English, depending on the speaker)

Proposals for talks: Please send an email to "hofferbert -at- mpia.de" or "naranjo -at- mpia.de" - alternatively you might reach us by phone (06221-528209 or -290) or in person (room 211 or 018) at MPIA.

Date	Speaker	Topic
22.09.2017 (10hrs, HdA)		First talk after the summer break
29.09.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Theodoros Anagnos (ZAH, LSW)	Simulation and Optimization of an Astrophotonic Reformatter Image slicing is a powerful technique in astronomy. It allows the instrument designer to reduce the angular slit width of the spectrograph, increasing spectral resolving power, whilst retaining throughput. Conventionally this is done using bulk optics, such as mirrors and prisms, however more recently astro-photonic components known as photonic lanterns and photonic reformatters have also been used. These devices reformat the multimode input light from a telescope into single mode outputs, which can then be re-arranged to suit the spectrograph. The photonic dicer is one such device, an integrated photonic reformatter (image slicer) designed to reduce the dependence of spectrograph size on telescope aperture and eliminate "modal noise". In this talk Theodoros Anagnos will describe his work simulating the photonic dicer by using both an adaptive optics simulator and a beam propagation software. He will show the combined results and compare them to on-sky data. Furthermore, he will show optimisations to the design of the device, improving throughput and making it more compact. Finally, the significance of these findings in terms of future designs of devices will be discussed, including their influence on adaptive optics instruments. Presentation: English Slides: English Questions: German, English
06.10.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Julien Milli (ESO)	Current performance and future prospects of the extreme-AO instrument SPHERE after 3 years of operations on Paranal
13.10.2017	--	No talk (MPIA Science Day)
20.10.2017 (10hrs, HdA)
27.10.2017 (10hrs, HdA)
03.11.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Wolfgang Gaessler	4MOST Update
10.11.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	--	No room available
17.11.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Hans J. Kaercher (MT Mechatronics GmbH)	Thinking in Forces (as a Tool for designing Telescope Structures) What is a force? One can start reflecting about it and philosophers have written whole books about this question. Ludwig Buechner, a „middle-class materialist“ of the 19th century wrote in his book „Kraft und Stoff“: „Kraft kann nichts weiter sein als eine Eigenschaft der Materie“, or „Kräfte lassen sich nicht mitteilen, sondern nur wecken“, and in this sense he is obviously with Isaac Newton, who is the originator of "thinking in forces" following his famous observation of the falling apple. Much later this led to the special engineering branch "structural mechanics", which was originally applied to bridge and building construction, lateron even in the more sophisticated branch of aerospace engineering. „Thinking in forces“ in the form of "graphical structural analysis" became a branch of engineering in the middle of the 19th century. This enables to think in both the "physical space" and the "force space", i.e. besides a design drawing also a force diagram is required. This is similar to projective geometry, where also dual spaces exist. Hans Kaercher will explain this approach in three examples: 1) designing reflectors for radio telescopes; 2) designing primary mirror supports for large optical telescopes; 3) designing tracking mounts for large optical elements. These examples will be discussed in the framework of currently running projects, like e.g. the 110m radio telescope QTT and the extremely large optical telescope GMT. Presentation: German Slides: English Questions: German, English
24.11.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Peter Bizenberger	The ELT METIS Imager
01.12.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Thomas Henning	The Future of optical and infrared Astronomy
08.12.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Philipp Hottinger (LSW)	Single Mode Fiber Coupling and Tip-Tilt Sensing using Microlens Arrays
15.12.2017 (10hrs, HdA)	Stefan Hippler	High-Contrast Imaging
22.12.2017 (10hrs, HdA)		Last talk before the Christmas break