Optical focusing and alignment of the Multi‐Spectral Solar Telescope Array II payload

Abstract

The Multi-Spectral Solar Telescope Array (MSSTA) is a sounding rocket borne observatory designed to image the sun at many spectral lines in soft x-ray, EUV, and FUV wavelengths. Of the nineteen telescopes flown on November 3, 1994 the two Cassegrain telescopes and three of the six Ritchey-Cretien telescopes were focussed at NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) with a Zygo double-pass interferometer to determine the best positions of back focus. The remaining three Ritchey-Cretien and eleven Herschellian telescopes were focussed in situ at White Sands Missile Range by magnifying the telescopic image through a Gaertner traveling microscope and recording the position of best focus. From the data obtained at visible wavelengths, it is not unreasonable to expect that many of our telescopes did attain the sub-arc second resolution for which they were designed.