Russ Mellon, President
Equinox Interscience, Inc.
303-886-8774
Golden, Colorado. Equinox Interscience, Inc. announced today that their optical black coating product, Deep Sky Black has recently undergone extensive testing and is now space qualified.
Deep Sky Black (DSB) is a low reflectivity/high emissivity surface treatment for stray light control in optical instrumentation and blackbody radiator applications. A typical application is to blacken the internal metal surfaces of telescopes and optical instruments in order to absorb stray light and prevent unwanted refections from interfering with the image.
Deep Sky Black (DSB) has recently undergone rigorous testing by Sandia National
Laboratory (SNL) at the NASA/White Sands Test Facility to determine its
suitability for use in space. Typical Space Qualification criteria include
product response and performance in vibration, thermal, and vacuum environments,
measurement of characteristics such as outgassing, dimensional stability, and
optical properties stability.
"The DSB product performed magnificently in all aspects of the SNL testing program", said Dan Scheld, EI VP of Engineering. "We had no failures in any area of the test criteria". The downloadable version of the report and performance characteristics and details are available at the EI web-site.
DEEP SKY BLACKTM is a family of products. DSB-VIS is optimized for performance in the visible wavelength regime, DSB-FSB (Full Spectrum Basic) is optimized for performance over the entire spectrum, and DSB-FSE (Full Spectrum Enhanced) is optimized to provide a more robust surface and is the best performer optically over a large wavelength regime. Equinox provides DSB to a wide range of customers for use in aircraft, spacecraft, commercial optical products, and astronomical instrumentation.
DSB is an EI proprietary process in production since 1997. DEEP SKY BLACKTM is jointly produced by Equinox Interscience/Advanced Surface Technologies in Arvada, Co.
For more information see: http://www.eisci.com/deepsky.html