Heliostat alignment techniques
The alignment of optical systems is crucial for proper operation. Heliostat mirror facet alignment entails two operations: focusing and canting. Mirror focusing is the slight bending of the facet surface into a concave shape. Heliostat canting consists of tilting each facet to direct the reflected sunlight at a single aimpoint. Two techniques have been developed.
![imagen](https://storage.googleapis.com/wp-uploads.bucket.wp.uc3m.es/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2021/03/01184740/imagen.png)
In the flux map fitting procedure, canting errors are found by matching computed flux maps to the experimental ones. The video shows the evolution of the optimization algorithm applied to a heliostat.
The target reflection method compares actual and theoretical images of the reflection of a known target on the heliostat facets. A neighbor heliostat can be used as target. From the comparison with the camera pinhole model, both canting and focusing errors are determined.
![](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50993996922_4c0057b560_c.jpg)
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