The ASTRI SST-2M prototype for the Cherenkov Telescope Array:

manufacturing of the structure and of the mirrors

Rodolfo Canestrari*a, Giacomo Bonnolia, Enrico Casconeb, Paolo Conconia, Giuseppe Crimia, Mauro
Fiorinic, Enrico Girod, Nicola La Palombarac, Giovanni Pareschia, Luca Perria, Gabriele
Rodeghierod, Giorgia Sironia, Luca Stringhettic, Giorgio Tosoc, Gino Tostie for the ASTRI
collaborationf and for the CTA Consortiumg and Carlo Pelliciaria
a
INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera – Via Bianchi, 46 23807 Merate (Lc) Italy
b
INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte – Salita Moiaiello, 16 80131 Napoli (Na) Italy
c
INAF-Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica di Milano – Via Bassini, 15 20133 Milano
d
INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova – Vicolo Osservatorio, 5 35122 Padova (Pd) Italy
e
Università di Perugia – Via A. Pascoli 06123 Perugia (Pg) Italy
f
http://www.brera.inaf.it/astri/
g
http://www.cta-observatory.org/

ABSTRACT

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory will represent the next generation of Imaging Atmospheric
Cherenkov Telescopes. Using a combination of large-, medium-, and small-scale telescopes (LST, MST, SST,
respectively), it will explore the Very High Energy domain from a few tens of GeV up to few hundreds of TeV with
unprecedented sensitivity, angular resolution and imaging quality.
In this framework, the Italian ASTRI program, led by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), is currently
developing a scientific and technological SST prototype named ASTRI SST-2M; a 4-meter class telescope, it will adopt
an aplanatic, wide-field, double-reflection optical layout in a Schwarzschild-Couder configuration.
In this contribution we give an overview of the technological solutions adopted for the ASTRI SST-2M prototype. In
particular we focus on the manufacturing of the telescope structure and mirrors. We will also describe early results from
tests.

Keywords: Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope, CTA, gamma-rays, wide field aplanatic telescope, lightweight
mirrors, segmented optics, ASTRI

1. INTRODUCTION

In the context of the ASTRI project, INAF has tendered the manufacturing of the electro-mechanical structure of the
ASTRI SST-2M telescope prototype. A contract has been granted to the GEC consortium composed by the Galbiati
group (www.galbiatigroup.it) and the EIE group (www.eie.it), two well-recognized Italian companies working
successfully for several years in the field of Astronomy in the designing and manufacturing of instrumentation.
The contract foresees the supply of the telescope prototype which includes not only the manufacture of the carpentry
components and the mechanical machining of the structures, but also the following activities:
• The design and supply of the electrical subsystem (i.e. the electrical cabinets to power and control the telescope,
the cable routing and the lighting protection);

*
rodolfo.canestrari@brera.inaf.it

Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, edited by Larry M. Stepp, Roberto Gilmozzi,

Helen J. Hall, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9145, 91450M • © 2014 SPIE
CCC code: 0277-786X/14/$18 • doi: 10.1117/12.2055805

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 • The factory pre-assembly andd testing of all structural, electrical and a electro-m
mechanical sub bsystems (i.ee.
mechhanical and ellectrical interfface checks annd pre-acceptaance tests);
• Packkaging, transpportation and installation onn the final site,, including com
mmissioning and final acceeptance tests.
The ASTRI SST-2M
S opto--mechanical structure
s will be in operatioon beginning in the autumnn at the “M. G.G Fracastoro””
observing staation in Serra La
L Nave, at abbout 1735 m a.s.l.
a
The constructtion of the prrototype will be
b followed by b a second ph hase where a reassessment and design sttudy based onn
the lessons leearned is foresseen. The outccome will leaad to the consttruction of a small
s series of telescopes to
o be deployedd
as a seed of CTA:
C the ASTTRI/CTA minii-array [1].
In the followwing sections, we report the present statte of the AST TRI SST-2M telescope mannufacturing concerning
c thee
structure (seee §2) and the mirrors
m (see §33).

2. TH
HE TELES
SCOPE
The mountingg of the telesccope is of thee alt-azimuthaal type; the maain parts are the
t base and tthe fork. The fork hosts thee
elevation beaarings and thee actuator forr the elevationn movement; it connects the t telescope with the basse through thee
azimuth drives system andd hosts the electrical
e cabinnets. On top, the optical supporting
s strructure is com
mposed of thee
primary mirroor dish, the mast with the ceentral tube, thhe secondary mirror
m back-upp structure andd the counterwweights.
The primary mirror (M1) dishd has a thicck ribbed platee to support th he 18 mirror segments
s withh their mirrorss supports andd
actuation systtems. It is connnected to thee mast, a slim quadrupode with
w an eccenntric symmetryy and some raadial bracings,
and to two loong arms suppporting the coounterweights.. On top of th he mast the suupporting struccture with acttuation system
m
for the seconndary mirror (M M2) is located. Optical bafffles, wind annd snow shieldds are also present. The strructures of thee
telescope willl be primarilly made of steel
s grade S3355 material. A detailed description
d off the telescoppe design andd
performance can be found in [2] and [3]. Figure 1 shoows the ASTR RI SST-2M tellescope.

Figure 1: Genneral view of thhe ASTRI SST-22M telescope sttructure and eleectro-mechanical subsystems.

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 The base consists in a truncated cone with reinforcing ribs to distribute loads; an access door is also available. The two
ends of the base show the interfaces with: the concrete foundation by means of the proper pattern of anchor bolts and
earthquake devices on the bottom side; the azimuth bearing and the bush of the stow pin on the top side. Additional
devices are hosted inside of the base, such as the azimuth strip encoder, the scanning heads, the motion references and
the cables.
The azimuth fork is one of the main structural elements. It provides support and interfaces for the subsystems that
provide the motion of the telescope mount main axes as well as the telescope safety during survival conditions. The
support frame for the electrical cabinets is also contained in the fork subsystem together with the cable trays and the
elevation cable wraps. The mass budget for the base subsystem is about 2.1 tons, while the complete fork (with all the
components attached) reaches 4.2 tons.
In Figure 2 we show some pictures of the base and the fork in the advanced phase of machining with some peripheral
components attached.

Figure 2: Main components of the azimuth mount assembly: the base and the fork structural elements photographed at the
manufacturer.

The optical support structure includes the M1 dish, the mast, the central tube and the M2 back-up structure. The M1 dish
is large, flat and composed of two halves. Its mass is about 4.7 tons. The interfaces to the mirror segment supports and
alignment devices are located on the top side. The bottom side hosts the interfaces with the elevation axis bearing and
drive systems, the counterweights and the electrical boxes of the active surface. The mirror segments are mounted on
active supports, each one composed of two actuators and one fixed point. This assembly is brought to the rough position
by means of triangular spacers having the proper inclination. Centering pins are used to interface the M1 segment
assembly to the M1 dish. Pictures of the structural parts and some of the other items above described are shown in Figure
3.

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 All the components are structures welded following ISO procedures and quality standards, and undergo thermal
treatments for stress relief.

Figure 3: Components of the primary mirror subsystem of the ASTRI SST-2M telescope. Top row: Part of the M1 dish. Central row:
Triangular spacer and actuation system. Bottom row: Centering pins and additional items ready to be assembled.

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 All the components are structures welded following ISO procedures and quality standards, and undergo thermal
treatments for stress relief.

Figure 3: Components of the primary mirror subsystem of the ASTRI SST-2M telescope. Top row: Part of the M1 dish. Central row:
Triangular spacer and actuation system. Bottom row: Centering pins and additional items ready to be assembled.

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 3.2 Manufacturing
The manufacturing of the mirrors has been entirely carried out at the INAF laboratories of the Brera Observatory. The
entire supply process was preformed, from the procurement of the raw materials to the delivery of the mirrors at the
integration site. The design and procurement of the cold-shaping molds, as well as the characterization of the mirrors we
also performed. In particular the molds were machined from blanks of aluminum by means of a milling process, and
later lapped by hand to remove the marks of the milling tool. Standard mechanical processes were adopted in order to
keep both the cost and the manufacturing time of the molds low. In Figure 5, the clean room lab where the molds are
located and used for the production of the mirrors, as well as the lab where the mirrors were finished (edges sealing, pad
gluing).
The procurement of the raw materials included the purchase of the correct amount of glass foils, honeycomb sheets,
epoxy resin cans, silicon cartridges, glass protection foils and mechanical interfaces to the telescope structure (stainless
steel pads). The procurement of all the materials took a couple of months. Shipping boxes with proper protection were
also part of the procurement.
The coatings of the mirror’s substrates were subcontracted to ZAOT s.r.l. company (www.zaot.com) and managed by
INAF for the quality assurance of the coating. The ASTRI SST-2M telescope will have two complete sets of mirrors and
some spares. The first set has an aluminum layer plus quartz over-coating (Al+SiO2), see the left panel of Figure 6; while
the second set has a full dielectric band-pass filter coating tailored to work on the 300-550 nm wavelength band; see the
right panel of Figure 6.
The whole production took about 70 working days for a total production of 36 mirrors plus 4 spares. The manufacturing
yield is 85% (36 good mirrors on 42 produced), and was later increased to 95% due to the recovery of 4 mirrors for use
as spares. The main phases were overlapped when possible in order to optimize the production time, and completed with
the following rates:
• Mirror substrates (i.e. sandwich preparation): 1 per day
• Coating (either Al+SiO2 or dielectric): 6 per week
• Characterization (i.e. reflectivity and surface shape errors): 6 per week
• Mirror finishing (edge sealing, pad gluing): 6 per week
INAF personnel including one technician (expert in optical manufacturing), four young researchers (mainly involved in
the optical and reflectivity characterizations) and one coordinator (also acting as technician) performed the production of
the mirrors.
The production had a cost of ≈30 kEuro for the manufacturing of the mirrors' substrates (which also includes the metallic
pads), ≈10 kEuro for the Al+SiO2 coatings and ≈30 kEuro for the dielectric coatings.

Figure 5: (left): CS molds used for the manufacturing of the mirror segments for the ASTRI SST-2M telescope. (right) Mirrors during
the last phase of the production

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 Figure 6: Segments of the ASTRI-SST 2M primary mirror. (left) Aluminum and quartz coating. (right) Dielectric coating.

3.3 Characterization
The full set of mirrors has been characterized in terms of local specular reflectivity and surface shape errors. The
reflectivity measurements were performed using an Ocean Optic spectrophotometer device with a sensitivity extending
from 357 nm to 900 nm. Unfortunately, the measurements taken below 470 nm are underestimated because of a strong
non-linearity of the detector gain at low photons fluxes. This also explains the high noise visible in particular below 400
nm. The surface of each mirror has been sampled with 9 measuring points over three diagonals, three points on three
diagonals. Each measurement is the average of 300 acquisitions. The measurements corresponding to the 9 points were
weighted to take into account the area of the circular corona subtended. Finally, the value of the reflectivity assigned to
each mirror was computed by averaging the resulting values. Mirrors having the dielectric coating were sampled with 15
points to better investigate the coating uniformity. Typical reflectivity curves for the aluminum-quartz-coated mirrors
and the dielectric-coated mirrors are shown in Figure 7. A slightly marked non-homogeneity is appreciable on the
dielectric mirrors with respect to the Al+SiO2 ones. It comes from the outer regions of the mirror (i.e. the corners).

AI/COR2-005 reflectivity Die /COR3 -004 reflectivity

100 100

80 80

60 60

Mean ref! 400 -550 nm :89.004663%

40 _,_,_,_ AI +Sì02 100nm (then) 40
_ _ _ _ Reference OAPd
measurements
average
20 20

0 0
300 400 500 600 700 800 900 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Wavelength [nm] Wavelength [nm]
Figure 7: Typical reflectivity curves from 357 nm to 900 nm for the ASTRI SST-2M mirrors: aluminum-quartz coating (left) and
dielectric-coating (right). The blue lines are the single measurements taken over the mirror surface; the red line represents the
weighted average. Values below 470 nm are underestimated because of the spectrophotometer used.

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 The surface shape
s errors were
w evaluatedd by means off a deflectometry technique where the loccal slopes are measured andd
used to ray-trrace the Pointt Spread Funcction (PSF) of the mirrors. The measureement setup iss shown in Fiigure 8. Threee
stations comppose it: the optical
o bench,, the mirror’ss holder and the fringes generator. Thee optical bencch hosts threee
commercial laser meters too measure the geometry of the measuring g setup (±1.5 mm precisionn over 60 m), a light sourcee
and a commeercial photograaphic camera (18 Mpx sensor). The mirrror’s holder iss a heavy-loadd rotatory stag ge with tip-tiltt
capability useed to hold annd align the mirror
m under test.
t The fringges generator is a commerrcial 65’’ wid de Ultra High--
Definition TV V screen with 3840×2160 pixels
p and posiitioned on a movable
m rail. The
T optical bench is placed in front of thee
mirror under test at a distannce comparabble to the radiuus of curvaturre of the mirroor. The TV scrreen is positio
oned along thee
optical (off-) axis of the miirror.
This setup caan be used foor a qualitativve test and a quantitative one.
o The quallitative test iss performed using
u the light
source illuminating the mirrror. At the TV screen posiition the prime focus PSF is imaged and recorded. The procedure iss
repeated by moving
m the sccreen at differrent positions to scan the fo
ocal depth. Thhe quantitativve test is donee replacing thee
light source with the cammera and projeecting the prooper pattern of o fringes witth the TV. The fringes are imaged andd
analyzed to retrieve
r the suurface slopes. Finally, the ray-tracing
r is compared witth the imagess of the primee focus PSF too
match the maain shape of thhe mirror (loww spatial frequuencies identiffying the radius of curvaturre). Exampless of the resultss
are shown in Figure 9.
The ray-traciing of the com
mplete opticaal layout of thhe ASTRI SS
ST-2M havingg the primaryy mirror filled d with the 188
segments andd the nominal secondary mirror
m has beenn also compu
uted. The preliiminary resultts of the expeected PSF andd
Enclosed Eneergy are shownn in Figure 100.
A detailed disscussion abouut the test methhods and the results
r are presented in a sepparate proceeding of this co
onference [7]..

LS=L `',JI P

Lrl

Figure 8: Deflectometry
D m
measurement seetup used to chaaracterize the shhape errors of tthe mirrors.

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 05 PSF , P RT Al-CORI-005 PSF at RT A -G PSF , PO RT

I-CORI-005 PSF , PO RT Al-CORI-005 PSF at,I PO2 RT

',.

Figure 9: Comparison
C betw
ween prime foccus PSFs of a tyypical mirror as retrieved from direct imagingg (left) and ray-ttracing from
deflectom
metry measurem ment (right).

Al s egments

1.0
EE lhec>, 84.27°0

EE COF31, 78.78%
/
EE COF32, 94.15% /
0.8 EE COF33, 63.94%. . r
EE TOT 78.91%
/

/
0.6

0.4

,
V.G

o. o á
2 3 5
HALF VNIDTH (mm)

Figure 10: Prreliminary evaluuation of the exxpected PSF (leeft) and Encloseed Energy (righht) for the entiree optical layout of the ASTRI
SST-22M with the priimary mirror fillled with real mirrors.
m

4. CONCLUSI
C IONS
This paper prresents the maanufacturing of o the ASTRI SST-2M telesscope, prototyype of the Small Size class of Telescopess
with a Dual-m mirror configuuration for thee Cherenkov Telescope
T Arraay.
The manufactturing of the telescope
t electro-mechanicaal structure haas been subconntracted to topp-level Italian
n companies inn
the field of asstronomical innstrumentationn developmennt.

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 The biggest parts of the structures are in very advanced state of manufacturing; some of them being already complete.
The large majority of the subcomponents have been purchased, if commercial parts (i.e. bearings, nuts or drives), or
manufactured, if small components, and assembled.
The manufacturing of the mirrors of the ASTRI SST-2M has been done in-house using INAF labs and personnel. The
CS technology has been adopted after an ad hoc development to push its limit to the short radius of curvature required by
the optical design adopted by the telescope. Two sets of mirrors have been manufactured and characterized giving the
possibility to explore the use of dielectric coating to possibly enhance the performances of the telescope.
The complete assembly and commissioning of the telescope at the site of installation is schedule from August to October
2014.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was partially supported by the ASTRI “Flagship Project” financed by the Italian Ministry of Education,
University and Research (MIUR) and led by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF). We also acknowledge
partial support by the MIUR Bando PRIN 2009.
We gratefully acknowledge support from the agencies and organizations listed in this page: http://www.cta-
observatory.org/?q=node/22.
We also acknowledge the valuable collaboration of the company ZAOT s.r.l. (http://www.zaot.com) for the reflectivity
coatings, and FLABEG GmbH for the manufacturing of the secondary mirror.

REFERENCES

[1] Pareschi G., et al., “The ASTRI/CTA mini-array of small size telescopes dual-mirror: a first seed for the
Cherenkov telescope array,” this conference 9145-22 (2014)
[2] Canestrari R., et al., “The ASTRI SST-2M prototype for the next generation of Cherenkov telescopes: structure
and mirrors,” Proceeding SPIE 8861, 886102 (2013)
[3] Marchiori G., et al., “The ASTRI SST-2M prototype for the next generation of Cherenkov Telescope Array:
prototype technologies, goals, and strategies for the future SST,” this conference 9145-20 (2014)
[4] Canestrari R., et al., “Cold-shaping of thin glass foils as novel method for mirrors processing. From the basic
concepts to mass production of mirrors,” Optical Engineering, 52-5, 051204-1 (2013)
[5] Canestrari R., et al., “The glass cold-shaping technology for the mirrors of the Cherenkov Telescope Array,”
this conference 9151-102 (2014)
[6] Giro E., et al., “Tests characterization and alignment for the optics of the ASTRI SST-2M telescope prototype
for the Cherenkov Telescope Array,” this conference 9151-135 (2014)
[7] Sironi G., et al., “Deflectometry for optics evaluation: free-form segments of polynomial mirrors,” this
conference 9151-28 (2014)

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