Jose (Joselito) is a third year Mechanical Engineering student at University of Hawaii at Manoa after attending Kapiolani Community College and graduating from Moanalua High School. He was born and raised on O’ahu, where he currently lives. After graduating, Jose hopes to be giving back to his community in Hawai’i by working back home. In his free time, he loves to spend time with his friends and family, and play sports.
Home Island: O’ahu
High School: Moanalua High School
Institution when accepted: University of Hawaii at Manoa
Akamai Project: Precision Alignment of Optics/Mounts Utilizing the Hexagon Absolute 7-Axis Arm
Project Site: University of California Observatories – Santa Cruz, CA
Mentor: Daren Dillon
Project Abstract:
The Laboratory for Adaptive Optics (LAO) researches and develops adaptive-optics systems for high-resolution astronomy instrumentation for the broader University of California astronomy community, including the Keck, Gemini, and Lick Observatories. With astronomy instrumentation becoming more complex over time, the process of setting up and aligning the optical systems has become both tedious and time consuming. This is due to the level of precision required to fully align the optics and mounts, which can be difficult when done by hand. In an effort to minimize the amount of time needed during the alignment phase, the lab recently acquired a Hexagon Absolute 7-Axis arm, a high-precision articulating measuring arm, to set up and align optical layouts for the ongoing projects. Previously, there was no alignment procedure set for the arm, so one was created. The newly created procedure set consists of a measurement routine in the arm’s software, PC-DMIS, that compares the optical layout’s nominal measurements to the actual physical positions in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system. Due to arm measurement limitations, the optical setup must be aligned further using a wavefront sensor at different areas of the layout to ensure overall high wavefront quality. This procedure set was applied to a simple optical layout multiple times to ensure consistency in setup and wavefront readings. The wavefront quality was tested immediately after setup using the arm, and then after adjusting further using the wavefront sensor readings. The arm successfully aligned the layout to 150 nanometers RMS, then was further aligned to 5–10 nm using the wavefront sensor, with a majority of the adjustments dealing with slight position changes due to arm measurement limitations. Â