Characterization of Optical Aberrations Induced by Thermal Gradients and Vibrations via Zernike and Legendre Polynomials

For every astronomical instrument, the operating conditions are undoubtedly different from those defined in a setup experiment. Besides environmental conditions, the drives, the electronic cabinets containing heaters and fans introduce disturbances that must be taken into account already in the preliminary design phase. Such disturbances can be identified as being mostly of two types: heat sources/sinks or cooling systems responsible for heat transfer via conduction, radiation, free and forced convection on one side and random and periodic vibrations on the other. For this reason, a key role already from the very beginning of the design process is played by integrated model merging the outcomes based on a Finite Element Model from thermo-structural and modal analysis into the optical model to estimate the aberrations. The current paper presents the status of such model, capable of analyzing the deformed surfaces deriving from both thermo-structural and vibrational analyses and measuring their effect in terms of optical aberrations by fitting them by Zernike and Legendre polynomial fitting respectively for circular and rectangular apertures. The independent contribution of each aberration is satisfied by the orthogonality of the polynomials and mesh uniformity.