Shin'ichi Nagata

Image stabilization system on SOLAR-B Solar Optical Telescope

Extremely stable pointing of the telescope is required for images on the CCD cameras to accurately measure the nature of magnetic field on the sun. An image stabilization system is installed to the Solar Optical Telescope onboard SOLAR-B, which stabilizes images on the focal plane CCD detectors in the frequency range lower than about 20Hz. The system consists of a correlation tracker and a piezo-based tip-tilt mirror with servo control electronics. The correlation tracker is a high speed CCD camera with a correlation algorithm on the flight computer, producing a pointing error from series of solar granule images. Servo control electronics drives three piezo actuators in the tip-tilt mirror. A unique function in the servo control electronics can put sine wave form signals in the servo loop, allowing us to diagnose the transfer function of the servo loop even on orbit. The image stabilization system has been jointly developed by collaboration of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan/Mitsubishi Electronic Corp. and Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory. Flight model was fabricated in summer 2003, and we measured the system performance of the flight model on a laboratory environment in September 2003, confirming that the servo stability within 0-20 Hz bandwidth is 0.001-0.002 arcsec rms level on the sun.

Japanese sounding rocket experiment with the solar XUV Doppler telescope

We present an overview of an ongoing Japanese sounding rocket project with the Solar XUV Doppler telescope. The telescope employs a pair of normal incidence multilayer mirrors and a back-thinned CCD, and is designed to observe coronal velocity field of the whole sun by measuring line- of-sight Doppler shifts of the Fe XIV 211 angstroms line. The velocity detection limit is estimated to be better than 100 km/s. The telescope will be launched by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in 1998, when the solar activity is going to be increasing towards the cycle 23 activity maximum. Together with the overview of the telescope, the current status of the development of each telescope components including multilayer mirrors, telescope structure, image stabilization mechanism, and focal plane assembly, are reviewed. The observation sequence during the flight is also briefly described.

Design and Performance of Tip-Tilt Mirror System for Solar Telescope

The tip-tilt mirror (TTM) system was developed for the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) Cassegrain telescope aboard the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science sounding rocket. The spatial resolution of the telescope is about 5 arcsec, whereas the rocket pointing is only controlled to be within ±0.5 deg of the target (sun) without additional stability control. To stabilize the XUV image within about 5 arcsec on the focal plane, the TTM system controls the tilt of the secondary mirror with two-axis fixed-coil magnetic actuators. The TTM system has a wide tilt angle and can drive the large secondary mirror at high frequency. The two position-sensitive detectors, one placed in the telescope and the other in the TTM mechanical structure, are used for closed-loop control of the TTM. The closed-loop control system, which has command and telemetry, is executed by the flight software on the digital signal processor. The TTM has a launch-lock mechanism to protect against launch vibrations up to about 16G. The sounding rocket was launched from the Kagoshima Space Center on 31 January 1998. The TTM worked perfectly during the flight and achieved better than the expected 5-arcsec stability on the focal plane during CCD charge-coupled device exposures.

Development of multilayer mirrors for the XUV Doppler telescope

We present the development status of the normal incidence XUV multilayer mirrors for XUV Doppler telescope, which observes coronal velocity fields of the whole sun. The telescope has two narrow band-pass multilayer mirrors tuned to slightly longer and shorter wavelengths around the Fe XIV line at 211.3 Angstrom. From the intensity difference of the images taken with these two bands, we can obtain Dopplergram of 1.8 MK plasma of the whole sun. It is required that the multilayer has high wavelength-resolution ((lambda) /(Delta) (lambda) approximately 30 per mirror), anti-reflection coating for intense He II 304 angstrom emission line and high d-spacing uniformity of approximately 1%.

XUV Doppler telescope with multilayer optics

We present an overview of a sounding-rocket experiment that is scheduled to be launched by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) in January 1998, the rising phase of the 11-year activity cycle of the sun. The purpose of this experiment is (1) to obtain whole-sun images taken in an XUV emission line, Fe XIV 211 A, using the normal incidence multilayer optics with a high spectral resolution of about 40, and (2) to carry out the velocity-field measurement with a detection limit as high as 100 km/s.

Development of the tip-tilt mirror system for the solar XUV telescope

This paper describes the design and prelaunch performance of the tip-tilt mirror (TTM) system developed for the XUV Cassegrain telescope aboard the ISAS sounding rocket experiment. The spatial resolution of the telescope is about 5 arcsec, whereas the rocket pointing is only controlled to be within +/- 0.5 degree around the target without stability control. The TTM is utilized to stabilize the XUV image on the focal planes by tilting the secondary mirror with two-axes fixed-coil type actuators. The two position- sensitive detectors in the telescope optics and in the TTM mechanical structure from the normal and local closed-loop modes. The TTM has four grain modes with automatic transition among the modes. The low gain mode is used in the initial acquisition, and in case the TTM loses the tracking. The high gain mode is used in the normal tracking mode. This arrangement provides us with the wide initial acquisition angle with single TTM system as well as the high pointing accuracy once the tracking is established. The TTM has a launch-lock mechanism against the launch vibration of 16G. The closed-loop control with command and telemetry interface is done by the flight software against the launch vibration of 16G. The closed-loop control with command and telemetry interface is done by the flight software on the DSP processor. The use of the fast processor brings in the significant reduction in the weight and size of the control- electronics, more flexible control system, and shorter design and testing period.