The PILOT optical alignment for its first flight

B. Mot (1) , Y. Longval , J. -Ph. Bernard (1) , P. Ade , Y. André (2) , J. Aumont , L. Bautista (1) , N. Bray (2) , P. Debernardis , O. Boulade , F. Bousquet (2) , M. Bouzit , V. Buttice , A. Caillat , M. Chaigneau , C. Coudournac (2) , B. Crane , F. Douchin (2) , E. Doumayrou , J. -P. Dubois , C. Engel (1) , P. Etcheto (2) , P. Gélot (2) , M. Griffin , G. Foenard (1) , S. Grabarnik , P. Hargrave , A. Hughes (1) , R. Laureijs , Y. Lepennec , B. Leriche , S. Maestre (1) , B. Maffei , A. Mangilli (1) , J. Martignac , C. Marty (1) , W. Marty (1) , S. Masi , F. Mirc (2) , R. Misawa (1) , J. Montel (2) , L. Montier (1) , J. Narbonne (1) , J. -M. Nicot (2) , F. Pajot (1) , G. Parot (2) , E. Pérot (2) , J. Pimentao , G. Pisano , N. Ponthieu (3) , I. Ristorcelli (1) , L. Rodriguez , G. Roudil (1) , M. Saccoccio (2) , M. Salatino , G. Savini , S. Stever , O. Simonella (2) , P. Tapie (2) , J. Tauber , C. Tibbs , J. -P. Torre , C. Tucker

1 IRAP - Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie
2 CNES - Centre National d’Études Spatiales [Paris]
3 UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes

PILOT is a balloon-borne astronomy experiment designed to study the polarization of dust emission in the diffuse interstellar medium in our Galaxy at wavelengths 240 and 550 µm with an angular resolution of about two arc-min. PILOT optics is composed of an off-axis Gregorian telescope and a refractive re-imager system. All these optical elements, except the primary mirror, are in a cryostat cooled to 3K. We used optical and 3D measurements combined with thermo-elastic modeling to perform the optical alignment. This paper describes the system analysis, the alignment procedure, and finally the performances obtained during the first flight in September 2015

Keywords: Astrophysics; Submillimeter telescope; Optical instrumentation; Polarization; Optical alignment

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]

B. Mot, Y. Longval, J. -Ph. Bernard, P. Ade, Y. André, et al.. The PILOT optical alignment for its first flight. CEAS Space Journal, 2017, 9, pp.459-471. ⟨10.1007/s12567-017-0159-3⟩. ⟨insu-03676800⟩