Sky demonstration of potential for ground-layer adaptive optics correction

Christoph J. Baranec; Michael Lloyd-Hart; Johanan L. Codona; N. Mark Milton

doi:10.1117/12.539897

24 December 2003 Sky demonstration of potential for ground-layer adaptive optics correction

Christoph J. Baranec, Michael Lloyd-Hart, Johanan L. Codona, N. Mark Milton

Proceedings Volume 5169, Astronomical Adaptive Optics Systems and Applications; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.539897
Event: Optical Science and Technology, SPIE's 48th Annual Meeting, 2003, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Observations have been made at the Steward Observatory 1.55 m telescope of a four-star asterism in the constellation Serpens Cauda, using a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. The stars are all within a 2 arcminute field, and range in apparent brightness from m_v of 9.4 to 10.6. The instrument placed a 5 x 5 array of square subapertures across the pupil of the telescope, and had sufficient field of view to allow wavefront data to be recorded from all four stars simultaneously. Snapshots at 1/30 s exposure time were recorded, with no temporal coherence between exposures. We have reconstructed the first 20 Zernike modes from the slope data for each star. In a preliminary analysis, we show that the wavefront aberration in each star can be roughly halved by subtracting the average of the wavefronts from the other three stars. The averages represent estimates of the aberration introduced by the lowest few hundred meters of the atmosphere, so the result provides an early indication of the potential for image sharpening by compensation of boundary layer turbulence.

Citation Download Citation

Christoph J. Baranec, Michael Lloyd-Hart, Johanan L. Codona, and N. Mark Milton "Sky demonstration of potential for ground-layer adaptive optics correction", Proc. SPIE 5169, Astronomical Adaptive Optics Systems and Applications, (24 December 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.539897

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