PILOT optical alignment

<p>Baptiste MOT</p>

PILOT optical alignment

Baptiste MOT

Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie, France

: Res J Opt Photonics

Abstract

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 μm and 550 μm with an angular resolution of a few arc-minute. Pilot optics is composed an off-axis Gregorian type telescope and a refractive re-imager system. All optical elements, except the primary mirror, are in a cryostat cooled to 3K. We combined the optical, 3D dimensional measurement methods and thermoeslastic modeling to perform the optical alignment. I will present the system analysis, the alignment procedure, and finally the performances obtained during the second flight in March 2017.