MAYFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Materion Precision Optics, a Materion Corporation (NYSE:MTRN) business,
is set to begin the first phase of manufacturing six of the world's
largest precision astronomical filters to date for the new Large
Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The LSST is a partnership between
public and private organizations, including the U.S. National Science
Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. The curved filters, 80 cm
in diameter and weighing between 15-30 kilograms, will be installed in
the Telescope's (3.2 gigapixel) digital camera for a 10-year period to
survey and map tens of billions of stars and galaxies.
"Only a few years ago a large filter would have been around 10 cm in
diameter. We have repeatedly scaled up to meet the astronomy community's
increasing requirement for larger filters," said Michael Newell,
President, Materion Precision Optics. "The LSST filters will be the
largest we have built and our large optics facility in Westford,
Massachusetts is well suited for the task as it was designed
specifically for filters of this size."
The coating design and process development phase of the large
astronomical filters is being undertaken for the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in the Class 1000 cleanroom of the large optics
facility. The filters will contain a surface coating uniformity of well
under 1 percent and cover spectral wavelengths from ultraviolet to near
infrared. The facility will also allow for spectral performance testing
of the LSST filters in an operation beam simulation using Materion's
newly developed metrology instrument.
Materion's astronomical filters will make it possible for the LSST to
document a section of the sky every 20 seconds, amounting to more than
800 panoramic images each night off the El Peñón mountain peaks in
northern Chile. In total the telescope is expected to produce 200,000
images (1.28 petabytes) each year, capturing sharp images of objects 10
million times fainter than visible to the human eye.
With over 40 years of experience since its founding as Barr Associates
Inc., Materion Precision Optics has been at the forefront of producing
large astronomical filters for the space and astronomy industry. Recent
work in the large optics facility has included the production of large
filters for Subaru Hyper-Suprime Cam (HSC), 60 cm diameter; DECam, 62 cm
diameter; Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), 49 x 45 cm; Canada France
Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) MegaCam upgrade, 30 cm x 35 cm; and many others.
Materion Corporation is headquartered in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. The
company, through its wholly owned subsidiaries, supplies highly
engineered advanced enabling materials to global markets. Products
include precious and non-precious metals, inorganic chemicals and
powders, specialty coatings, specialty engineered beryllium alloys,
beryllium and beryllium composites, and engineered clad and plated metal
systems.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160418005956/en/
Materion Corporation
Investor Contact:
Michael
C. Hasychak, 216-383-6823
mike.hasychak@materion.com
or
Media
Contact:
Patrick S. Carpenter, 216-383-6835
patrick.carpenter@materion.com
or
http://www.materion.com
Mayfield
Hts-g
Source: Materion Corporation
News Provided by Acquire Media