The Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT) optical alignment

The Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT) is the largest radio telescope recently built in Europe - a 64m Radio Telescope designed to operate in a wavelength regime down to 1mm. The SRT is designed in a classical Gregorian configuration, allowing access to the primary mirror focus (F1), the Gregorian focus (F2) as well as a further translation to different F3 using a beam waveguide system and an automated change between different F3 receiver positions. The primary mirror M1, 64m in diameter, is composed by 1008 individual panels. The surface can be actively controlled. It's surface, as well as the one of the 8 m Gregorian subreflector, needed to be adjusted after panel mounting at the Sardinia site. The measurement technique used is photogrammetry. In case of the large scale M1 a dedicated combination of a large scale and a small scale approach was developed to achieve extremely high accuracy on the large scale dimension. The measurement/alignment efforts were carried out in 2010 and 2011, with a final completion in spring 2012. The results obtained are presented and discussed. The overall alignment approach also included the absolute adjustments of M2 to M1 and the alignments of M3, M4 and M5. M3 is a rotating mirror guiding the RF beam to M4 or M5, depending on the operational scenario. These adjustments are based on Lasertracker measurements and have been carried out in an integrated approach.