Wide-field telescope design for the KMTNet project

Abstract

The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) are under development three 1.6m optical telescopes for the Korea Micro-lensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) project. These will be installed at three southern observatories in Chile, South Africa, and Australia by middle 2014 to monitor dense star fields like the Galactic bulge and Large Magellanic Cloud. The primary scientific goal of the project is to discover numerous extra-solar planets using the gravitational micro-lensing technique. We have completed the final design of the telescope. The most critical design issue was wide-field optics. The project science requires the Delivered Image Quality (DIQ) of less than 1.0 arcsec FWHM within 1.2 degree radius FOV, under atmospheric seeing of 0.75 arcsec. We chose the prime-focus configuration and realized the DIQ requirement by using a purely parabolic primary mirror and four corrector lenses with all spherical surfaces. We present design results of the wide-field optics, the primary mirror coating and support, and the focus system with three linear actuators on the head ring.