Nanometre-accurate form measurement machine for E-ELT M1 segments

To enable important scientific discoveries, ESO has defined a new ground-based telescope: the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). The baseline design features a telescope with a 39-m-class primary mirror (M1), making it the largest and most powerful telescope in the world. The M1 consists of 798 hexagonal segments, each about 1.4 m wide,...

Design of an E-ELT M1 segment measurement machine with nanometer accuracy

The baseline design of the European Extremely Large Telescope features a telescope with a 39-meter-class primary mirror (M1), consisting of 798 hexagonal segments. A measurement machine design is presented based on a non-contact single-point scanning technique, capable of measuring the form error of each segment with nanometer uncertainty, fast,...