Linear Motors for Astronomical Mirrors

Compensating the atmospheric turbulence with Adaptive Optics techniques dramatically improves ground-based astronomical images. As the image quality of a telescope depends on the level of the rapid turbulence corrections, a very high deformation accuracy of the adaptive optical surface must be achieved. This paper illustrates how a properly designed linear motor can accomplish this challenging task on large optical surfaces without degrading the optical environment The design concept of the linear actuators for adaptive deformable mirrors is discussed, as well as the numerical computation methods and results.