Development status of the fast-steering secondary mirror of GMT

Abstract

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be equipped with two Gregorian secondary mirrors; a fast-steering secondary mirror (FSM) for seeing-limited operations and an adaptive secondary mirror (ASM) for adaptive optics observing modes. The FSM has an effective diameter of 3.2 m and is comprised of seven 1.1 m diameter circular segments, which are conjugated 1:1 to the seven 8.4m segments of the primary mirror. Each FSM segment has a tip-tilt capability for fast guiding to attenuate telescope wind shake and jitter. The FSM is mounted on a two-stage positioning system; a macro-cell that positions the entire FSM segments as an assembly and seven hexapod actuators that position and drive the individual FSM segments. In this paper, we present a technical overview of the FSM development status. More details in each area of development will be presented in other papers by the FSM team.