Soiling induced nano-defects on aluminum telescope mirror coatings

Airborne contaminations on telescope mirrors are an important issue that is significantly affecting their reflectance, IR emissivity, and light scattering properties. Microscopic damage caused by environmental contaminants is of major interest for high-performance telescope mirror coatings. We have...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied optics (2004) 2022-04, Vol.61 (10), p.2727
Main Authors: Willers, Guido, Hagendorf, Christian, Naumann, Volker, Holzlöhner, Ronald, Guisard, Stéphane
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aluminum
Coatings
Contaminants
Damage
Dust
Telescopes
Very Large Telescope
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Airborne contaminations on telescope mirrors are an important issue that is significantly affecting their reflectance, IR emissivity, and light scattering properties. Microscopic damage caused by environmental contaminants is of major interest for high-performance telescope mirror coatings. We have exposed unprotected Al coated mirrors under real operation conditions at the Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal/Chile for three years. The unique finding is that, in spite of a dry and low-dust environment, the reflective layers are damaged by interaction between dust particles on the Al mirror surface and capillary condensation. We analyze this particular damage mechanism at the microstructural level.
ISSN:1559-128X
2155-3165
DOI:10.1364/AO.452904