Jia Jun was born in China but raised in Honolulu. He graduated from McKinley High school and currently attends University of Hawai‘i at Manoa pursuing a degree in Computer Engineering. Currently he is part of the UH Drone Technologies Lab in the software subsystem where he works on the autonomous systems of the drone. He plans to explore more in the field of robotics and discover the specifics along the way.
Home Island: O‘ahu
High School: McKinley High School
Institution when accepted: UH Manoa
Project Site: Subaru Telescope, Hilo, Hawai‘i Island
Mentors: Olivier Guyon & Julien Lozi
Project title: Designing and Testing an Accelerometer Data Acquisition System for the Subaru Telescope Vibration Control System
Project Abstract:
Ground-based telescopes like Subaru face two dominant sources of pointing disturbances: atmospheric turbulence and mechanical vibrations. While turbulence is broadband and random, mechanical vibrations typically occur at discrete frequencies tied to hardware components. These vibrations affect high-contrast imaging systems, particularly the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) instrument, causing blur in the captured image. Prior vibration studies using SCExAO revealed that low-frequency disturbances—below 10 Hz—originated from the telescope itself. These vibrations were characterized using accelerometers, with frequency patterns correlating to the telescope’s rotational speeds. To correct for these vibrations, a low-latency correction system is being developed using accelerometer real-time data. The accelerometers connect to an Integrated Circuit Piezoelectric (ICP) signal conditioner that provides excitation current and removes the DC bias from the output signal. The conditioned signal is then digitized through an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and read by a Raspberry Pi 4 as a USB Type 1 class audio stream at an 8kHz sampling rate. A C program utilizing the PortAudio library reads the data and then writes it to shared memory via the Multi-purpose Imaging Libraries toolKit (milk), enabling real-time data streaming over Ethernet to the SCExAO server. This system will be installed on the top ring of the telescope to provide real-time vibration measurements and data logging, which will be used to create and implement a linear control model to actuate the adaptive optics tip-tilt mirror for vibration correction. This system aims to enhance image stability and improve overall SCExAO performance, particularly during sensitive, high-contrast observations.