[ATM] Any Amateur Adaptive or Active Optics ?

["matt" <mariusrf@bellsouth.net>]

Hello list,
Are there any amateur active or adaptive optics in use , built or at least
being developed ?
The key ingredients seem to be already available in an almost suitable form
, and the technologies involved are only getting cheaper, better and more
widely available .
There are flex mirrors, all they need now is maybe some electric actuators,
there are amateur built ccd cameras, cheap webcams and digicams , all they
need is a lenslet array to become a Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor. There
are free programs to analyze Hartmann mask ccd images .
There are very powerful and cheap computers , so why not amateur adaptive
optics yet ?
There are people building 30" to 40"+ scopes , and the isoplanatic patch is
on the avergae 1/10 of that . Are we confining ourselves to power free
operation, dob style mounts ?
I'm missing the point of making better mirrors and scopes , polishing,
figuring and testing to more and more accurate results,  when in the end any
scope over 6-8" diameter is mostly limited by seeing . Mirrors with Strehl
of 0.96 get reduced to mush down to a Strehl of 0.1 due to turbulence . Just
waiting for that one or 2 days a year when seeing cooperates is like making
a car with no wheels and then waiting for friends to come and visit instead
. I'm surprised nobody has put together anything yet that could be used or
even built by amateurs .


best regards,
matt tudor

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