Navigation


Date Speaker Topic
09.01.2015 -- No talk (Christmas break)
16.01.2015 Wolfgang Gaessler Sharper vision with ARGOS eyes

Argos - the all-seeing - was a primordial giant with hundred eyes in the Greek mythology. ARGOS the Advanced Rayleigh guided Ground layer adaptive Optics System for the LBT (Large Binocular Telescope) was named after this giant, because the system will also have a lot of eyes. Recently, the first of these eyes were taken into operation. Now, ARGOS is watching with "Argos-eyes" for LUCI.

One year after the first laser stars have been projected on sky, the "Loop" could be closed on one side of the LBT simultaneously on three guide stars. The performance of the system was better than expected. A factor two improvement in image quality was the goal, but reality exceeded this prediction. Nevertheless, the images look not that spectacular than of other Adaptive Optics Systems, because ARGOS does not goal on the diffraction limit but on increasing the slit throughput for spectroscopy in a large range of atmospheric conditions.

Wolfgang Gaessler will present the project and its current status. He will tell us which problems are solved and which still have to be solved. And we will learn when ARGOS will be ready and what one can do with it. But the question is: Will ARGOS have the same fate as Argos? In the Greek mythology, Zeus ordered Hermes to kill Argos to free Io. Hermes succeed. In the real world it also looks like that some Argeiphontes (slayer of Argos) start to gather!

Talk:German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
23.01.2015 Peter Bizenberger Mission Impossible: The alignment of LINC-NIRVANA

Patience and meditation is the way to reach Nirvana. That's what the Buddhism teaches. How is this related to LINC-NIRVANA? This instrument exists in principal just of three simple components: telescope, plus Adaptive Optics, plus infrared camera - all done before, easy - some people thought and also told! But, if one wants explore the full capability of a 23 meter telescope with this instrument, one has to invest a lot. The individual units are already demanding, but they are designed for the combination of the two 8.4 meter primary mirrors of the LBT (Large Binocular Telescope) and they have to be aligned with such precision accordingly. This brings existing technology to its limits - mission impossible?

Peter Bizenberger explains the intricacy of LN and the requirements on the precision needed to align LN. A task which is done the first time at our institute in such complexity. To fulfill this task detailed planning and a large number of measurement technology and tools are unavoidable as well the control of the execution of each step are essential. Peter will present to us an overview of how the team handles the efforts from the design of the instrument to the fixing of the last screw, as well as of current the results. A thriller with lot of Action ....................................Items!

Talk:German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
Answers: Swabian
30.01.2015 Peter Hartmann (Schott AG) ZERODUR®: Glass ceramic with ultra-low thermal expansion

Requirements on shape and dimensional stability of high tech components are continuously growing. Mirror shape profile must be kept constant within 10 nm, in microlithography silicon wafers must be positioned to 0.3 nm precision. Active temperature stabilization must be complemented by using materials which change their extension lowest possible with temperature variations.

Here the glass ceramic ZERODUR® takes a prominent position with more than 45 years of successful application. Even though being unchanged in its composition it was subject of significant progress nonetheless in the last ten years. The production process enables mirrors of 4 and 8 m size with extreme homogeneity of the coefficient of thermal expansion in the 10-9/K range. Tempering processes basing on a physical model allow keeping CTE within limit of +/- 7×10-9/K. Even matching relative expansion Delta l/l to given temperature profiles for example for observatories is possible down to 10×10-9. CTE minimization is also possible for the temperature range 70 to 250 K. Bubbles, inclusions and striae content is very low as well as residual bulk stress. New processing methods enable lightweight structures with almost 90% weight reduction. Better modelling and an increased data base for bending strength support application at higher mechanical loads.

A large number of earth-bound and space-based projects prove the high material quality and its reproducibility, which is a decisive precondition for extremely large telescopes.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
06.02.2015
(11:15hrs)
Matthias Lezius
(Menlo Systems)
Technology and applications of frequency comb lasers

The optical frequency comb is the core product of Menlo Systems GmbH. Since its invention it has triggered numerous applications in very demanding areas of science like e.g. ultra high resolution spectroscopy, calibration of (astronomical) spectrometers, precision ranging, optical clocks, ultra-pure micro-wave generation, frequency and time transfer. In a general sense it has become the swiss knife of precision metrology of time, frequency, and length. Even mass and gravitation have been reported to be measurable at increased precision using the frequency comb.

In the present talk Matthias Lezius will present todays technologies how to build optical frequency combs based on femtosecond lasers, and how to apply this device to various metrological challenges.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
13.02.2015 Martin Kuerster Allocation of the MPIA integration halls in 2015

A lot of important maneuvers are planned in the three large integration halls at MPIA in 2015. Therefore, we use this week's talk for some programmatic discussions about needs and assumptions. Martin Kuerster will present the basic planning constraints to allow for a (preliminary) mutual agreement and fixation between all involved parties.

The following activities are scheduled in the "Montagehalle",
the "Experimentierhalle" and the "Reinraumschleuse":
* AIV, packing and transport for CARMENES incl. its test equipment
* Analogical for LINC-NIRVANA
* Remaining tasks for and storage of GRAVITY and MATISSE
* Open House Day installations and layout
* Implications for the outdoor area in front of the "Reinraumschleuse"
* Future use of the halls

Everybody is cordially invited. Attendance of the mentioned teams incl. project leaders/managers is vital for the discussion. Furthermore, persons with a perspective or a clear plan for an allocation of the hall(s) would be very helpful.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
20.02.2015 Ralf-Rainer Rohloff Carbon fiber components in astronomical instruments

Nowadays carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) is a standard material in aerospace applications. But also in other industrial fields, where products are driven by a low mass in conjunction with a high stiffness, like e.g. in vehicle construction or even sports equipment development, CFRP becomes more and more important.

There is an increasing trend to apply carbon fiber parts also in astronomical instrumentation. One of the pioneers in this field is the interferometric camera LINC-NIRVANA for the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The talk will also discuss other examples in other projects. In addition the properties and the manufacturing process of this interesting material will be described.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
27.02.2015 Sascha Douffet Occupational safety at MPIA

What is occupational safety ? Why do we need it at MPIA ? Who "implements" it ? What is an ASA-meeting ? BG ? Labour inspectorate ?

Every one of us has heard about it, some of us even have dedicated tasks in security-relevant fields at MPIA. But what is relevant for the rest of our colleagues in terms of training and instructions which aim to avoid any illegal practice.

Sascha Douffet will explain to us, how this complex field is organized at MPIA and MPG-wide, and how he became a trained employee for occupational safety. Furthermore, aspects like responsibility as individual person and in the team, established tools like ASIP for monitoring, available documentation and the importance of instructions will be discussed.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
06.03.2015 Uwe Graser MATISSE - the successor of MIDI at VLTI

During these days, MIDI gets dismounted at Paranal to make room for the two new "2nd generation VLTI instruments" GRAVITY und MATISSE. MIDI was in use at VLTI between December 2002 (installation) and February 2015. In this talk its successor, MATISSE, will be presented.

The features of MATISSE (for tongue-twister-enthusiasts: Multi-Aperture Mid-Infrared Spectroscopic Experiment) can be easily deduced from its name: Multi-Aperture means several telescopes (at least 2, maximum 4), Mid-infrared is clear anyway ("the wavelength range, in which we mostly emit radiation"), and Spectroscopic is something you don't have to explain at an institute like this.

More details of MATISSE, like its function (comprising a short intermezzo to "interferometry for dummies") and the composition of the instrument, MPIA's contribution and a bit of side-features like schedule and consortium structure will be briefly presented in this talk as well.

Talk: German
Slides: English, German
Questions: German, English
13.03.2015 Silvia Scheithauer The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)
aboard the James Webb Space Telescope


The James Webb Space Telescope shall be launched in 2018. Aboard it will have four scientific instruments: two of them - MIRI and NIRSpec - being European deliveries with contributions from MPIA. MIRI has been built by a European science consortium involving more than a dozen scientific institutes - among them MPIA.

MIRI includes an imager and two spectrometers capable of doing imaging, coronography as well as spectroscopy. MPIA has been responsible for the filter wheel and the two dichroic-grating wheel mechanisms of the instrument. They have been designed, partly manufactured and tested at MPIA with great involvements of the design engineering department, the mechanical and the electronics workshops, respectively. The scientific performance has been tested extensively in 2011 in the UK by the MIRI test team.

MIRI has been delivered to NASA in 2012, since then the test team is supporting the cryo-test campaigns at the Goddard Space Flight Center, is preparing the calibration pipeline and science cases. The talk will give an overview of MIRI's history at MPIA, its scientific performance and the future till the launch in 2018.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
20.03.2015 -- No talk (LN consortium meeting)
27.03.2015 Bernhard Dorner PANIC reactions after cryostat leak

After the recent damage of PANIC at Calar Alto the wider team will be informed about the current status.

Bernhard Dorner will report about the accident, the post-investigation of the instrument, Schrödinger's detector and a potential resurrection (last talk before Easter). In addition the expected impact on science will be outlined.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
03.04.2015 -- Good Friday
10.04.2015 -- No talk (Easter break)
17.04.2015 Michael Lehmitz PLC control for MATISSE

Before the use of PLCs ("Programmable Logic Controllers") control tasks for scientific instruments were usually implemented with the help of discrete contact switches, relays and other electro-mechanical components in conjunction with a complex wiring. With increasing complexity of the scientific instruments and their infratructure also the demands with respect to the required control systems and their flexibility have grown.

For MATISSE, the "Multi-AperTure mid-Infrared SpectroScopic Experiment" for the Very Large Telescope, MPIA applied for the first time PLCs for supervising the instrument's two cryogenic systems, for controlling its calibration light sources and for reading-out sensors on the optical bench.

In this talk Michael Lehmitz gives an introduction to PLC-based control technology and presents, via a live-demo, the performance of the MATISSE system.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
24.04.2015 Kai Weidlich (Airbus DS Optronics) BELA - ESA's first Laser Altimeter for Planetary Research


The space-qualified design of a miniaturized laser for the BepiColombo laser altimeter (BELA) will be presented. It will form an integral part of a larger geodesy and geophysics package on board the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) of the BepiColombo mission.

The laser facilitates pulsed operation at 10 Hz repetition rate and at 1064 nm wavelength. The laser design consists of a pair of diode-laser pumped, actively q-switched Nd:YAG rod oscillators encapsulated into dry synthetic air. The system delivers at least 300 million laser pulses with 50 mJ energy and 5 ns duration. It will be launched in 2016 and, after a six-years cruise, will start recording topographic data from orbital altitudes between 400 km and 1500 km above Mercury's surface. Critical qualification issues of the BELA Laser comprise reliable operation of laser diodes, accurate transmitter-to-receiver alignment, stable pulse energy and stable beam divergence over 300 million laser pulses.

Starting design work at Carl Zeiss Optronics Oberkochen in 2008 the BELA Laser project was completed at Airbus DS Optronics with flight spare delivery in 2014.

Talk: German
Slides: English Part1 Part2
Questions: German, English
01.05.2015 -- No talk (public holiday)
08.05.2015
Seminarraum!!
Tom Herbst
Patrick Fopp
David Neb
The MPIA all-sky camera

Observing time is very expensive, and state of the art large telescopes are operated out of a warm, closed, and isolated control room. What happens outside is often not visible to the observer until the (very expensive) data are reduced. Cloud cover and transparency variations can spoil an astronomical measurement and make optimizing telescope usage difficult.

An all sky camera is the solution, giving the observer information on what is happening outside, so that he or she can react to sudden changes in weather and other conditions. Patrick Fopp, David Neb, and Tom Herbst describe the MPIA All-Sky Camera, which is currently being tested on the roof of the MPIA.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
15.05.2015 --
No talk (bridging day after Ascension Day)
22.05.2015 Torsten Boeker
(ESA, STScI Baltimore)
NIRSpec and JWST - the search for the first light

NIRSpec is the Near-InfraRed Spectrograph for the James Webb Space Telescope and allows for the simultaneous observation of up to 100 astronomical objects. Designed and realized under the leadership of Airbus Defense and Space in Ottobrunn (Germany), NIRSpec has been completed and delivered to NASA in 2013.

In this talk, Torsten Boeker will give an overview of NIRSpec's opto-mechanical design and the various observing modes. In addition, he will describe the integration of NIRSpec into the instrument module ISIM since 2013 and will summarize the results of all the completed test campaigns. Finally, an outlook with respect to the remaining activities before JWST's launch in fall 2018 will be given.

Talk: German
Slides: English Part1 Part2
Questions: German, English
29.05.2015 Wolfgang Gaessler 4MOST

"Most", more than more, even 4 times more! A demanding name. Always, it was necessary to survey a large number of objects over a large area of the sky to understand the universe. More than 25 million of spectra from all kinds of sky objects over the full southern Hemisphere, that's the goal of 4MOST. Actually, less than the claim of the GAIA satellite mission.

How does this fit? What can we learn from the spectra? And how has the instrument to look like for such a task? Wolfgang Gaessler will present the answers in this talk.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
05.06.2015 -- No talk (bridging day after Corpus Christi)
12.06.2015 Bernhard Brandl
(Leiden Observatory)
METIS - the Mid-Infrared E-ELT Imager and Spectrograph

METIS will be one of the three first science instruments on the E-ELT. It will provide diffraction limited imaging and spectroscopy from 3-19µm. Focusing on its unique position on a 39m telescope, METIS will provide a new window to the thermal infrared universe at angular resolutions similar to what HST achieves in the optical, and unique high resolution (R~100,000) integral-field spectroscopy with JWST-like sensitivity (for unresolved lines).

The talk will focus on the science case for METIS with an emphasis on circum-stellar disks and exoplanets, the technical concept of the instrument, and some recent technology developments. Bernhard Brandl will also highlight the anticipated role of MPIA within the METIS project.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
19.06.2015 -- No talk (preparations for open house day)
26.06.2015 Knud Jahnke EUCLID

Do you know what dark energy and dark matter is? But they make 95% of the energy in the universe! EUCLID is an M-class mission of ESA launching 2020, with the goal to change our understanding of this dark side of the universe. The satellite has two instruments aboard. One is a visible imager (VIS) and the other is a near infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP). MPIA builds two major components of NISP. The first component is the calibration source of NISP and the second are the infrared filters of the instrument. But our institute is also involved in the calibration of the mission, simulation of the NISP instrument
and we supply the mission with the photometry instrument scientist.

Knud Jahnke will present an overview of EUCLID and NISP and tell us the current status of the NISP development in house and over all.


Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
03.07.2015 Reinhard Mundt CARMENES

The talk will consist of two main parts. The first part I will give an overview over the whole CARMENES-Project. CARMENES consists of two high-resolution 'echelle spectrographs (R=82000) for the search of extrasolar planets around nearby low-mass stars. One spectrograph covers the optical wavelength range (0.55-0.95 micron) and the other one the NIR wavelength range (1.0 - 1.7 micron). In the second part of the talk I will report about the detector cryostat for the NIR spectrograph, which is the major contribution of the MPIA to this project. It is equipped with a mosaic of two Hawaii 2RG detectors, which will be operated at about 85 K. This detector cryostat has been recently sent to our partner institute (IAA, Granada), where it will integrated soon for the first time in the 140 K cold NIR spectrograph.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
10.07.2015 Thomas Bertram LINC-NIRVANA leaves the lab

Soon it is done: In September LINC-NIRVANA will go on its journey to the LBT. A long and iterative process of design, manufacture, assembly, coding, alignment and verification will then be accomplished with an intense involvement of all technical departments at MPIA. During the last months the work was focused on the interplay of all systems as one instrument, besides the completion of a multitude of open details.

Thomas Bertram will explain, in which way the complex instrument was integrated and tested, what LINC-NIRVANA is able to do, what it yet not can do and how the story continues at the telescope.

Talk: German
Slides: English
Questions: German, English
17.07.2015
Last talk before the summer break!!
Hans-Walter Rix Astronomy: Exegesis of cosmic light

The laboratory of astrophysics is the universe itself, a laboratory presenting an incredible variety of physical phenomena, which, however, can only be "passively" observed from a distance without a chance for active manipulations. Nearly all aspects of astronomy are therefore in the end reducible to the exegesis, i.e. interpretation of light from the cosmos. There are good reasons to observe many celestial directions with steadily increasing resolution and sensitivity and at many different wavelengths.

Hans-Walter Rix will sketch, which technical and scientific possibilities emerge for observations with highest image quality using today's and future observatories. A talk for the non-astronomers at MPIA.

Talk: German
Slides: German Part1 Part2 Part3
Questions: German, English
Last modified 8 years ago Last modified on 9 Oct 2015, 13:47:06