Piezo-actuated vibration disturbance mirror for investigating accelerometer-based tip-tilt reconstruction in large telescopes*

Abstract: The optical performance of large telescopes depends not only on the correction of atmospheric turbulences but also on the suppression of structural vibrations. Nowadays, these disturbances are compensated by Adaptive Optics (AO) systems. Especially for the vibration suppression new control concepts are developed. A well-known method is a state feedback controller. However, for observations with natural faint guide stars the integration time of the wavefront sensor is increased and therefore the bandwidth of the control loop is not sufficient for a fully vibration compensation. Hence, we want to avoid this problem by using an Accelerometer-based Disturbance Feedforward control (DFF), which is independent of the integration time. The vibrations are measured at the relevant telescope mirrors and the tip-tilt modes are reconstructed for the actuator control signals. For investigating the DFF a laboratory setup is built. The setup consists of a classical AO system and additional designed tip-tilt mirrors for simulating and compensating the vibrations. Several accelerometer are mounted at the disturbance mirror. Based on the measured accelerations two position estimators are investigated in order to use them in real telescope applications.