| Advances in technology has provided means for astronomical optical telescopes to increase the aperture diameter (more light collecting capability) therefore increasing the resolution. Better resolution allows telescopes to observe more details and fainter objects. But an increase in diameter means an increase in optics size, which needs big and heavy structures to support them. New developments in composite materials have allowed Composite Mirror Application(CMA) in Tucson, Arizona to build a carbon fiber reinforced polymer(CFRP) telescope and optics for the Naval Research Laboratory(NRL), reducing significantly its weight. Other than weight, atmospheric turbulence is the other major problem for an increase in telescope resolution, but technologies such as adaptive optics(AO) can mitigate its effects. AO refers to systems which can adapt to compensate for effects introduced by the atmosphere or another medium. This thesis presents the results of two studies done on this next-generation telescope. First it presents work done on the development of two wavefront reconstructors for AO systems that the new telescope will use. The two reconstructors are based on Finite Difference(FD) and Finite Element(FE) methods, respectively. Second, work done on the characterization of the vibration behavior for this new type of composite material telescope is presented. Preliminary analysis of the data was performed using a new technique for analysing nonlinear systems, the Empirical Mode Decomposition(EMD). Data for both experiments was obtained from a 16 inch composite material telescope prototype and from a non-conventional AO system Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. |
