Re: ATM Active Optics

[Andy Saulietis <iss@pvtnetworks.net>]

Antonio writes,

> Has anybody challenged the idea of buildin  an active
>optics system. It's been going round my head for some time and I  don't 
>too ambitious project. Does  anybody  have information?      Benoit
>Schillings and  Brad Wallis page (developers  of SBIG AO7 system):
>http://voltaire.csun.edu/ao.html There is also another unit by Stellar
>Products  in: http://wwwstellarproducts.com     But both are omercial
>sites, so the have  just the pretty pictures  but no info :-(     Does
>anybody have further  information or knows of someone who has tried it?    

Benoit's system is actually a rapid response tip-tilt mirror
which corrects for guiding errors and the average movement
of the seeing disk & thus improves the apparent resolution
of CCD/photo images as these are now limited only by the
size of the seeing disk.

These systems are not actually 'active' optics in the sense usually
applied, in which a movable optical surface is used to modify the
wavefront to compensate for atmospheric aberrations, and actually
reduce the size of the star image by improving the wavefront. These
systems are very expensive & a long way from being within the reach of ATM's
currently, but some of the requirements are getting easier, such as
the availability of Ghz processors, and lasers. I've been toying
with ideas related to using a CCD camera to record a Harmann test
in ~ real time to control the figure of a large thin mirror. 


Andy Saulietis
ISS Enterprises
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Mayhill NM 88339
505-687-3067 voice
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e-mail: iss@pvtnetworks.net