Adaptive Optics for Astronomy / Edition 1

by D.M. Alloin, Jean-Marie Mariotti

Overview

For many astronomers, Adaptive Optics is something like a dream coming true. Sinee 1609 and the first observations of celestial bodies performed with the help of an optieal teleseope, astronomers have always fighted to improve the 'resolving power' of their instruments. For a long time, engineers have trimmed the optieal quality of the teleseopes, until they finally reaehed the barrier set by the atmospherie turbulence, a few seconds of are. At that point, the intrinsic quality of the site beeame a major issue to establish new observatories with modern telescopes, and astronomers started to desert the urban skies and to migrate toward mountains and deserts. This quest has been sueeessful and a few privileged sites, where the average natural 'seeing' is close to 0. 5", are now hosting clusters of giant telescopes of the 4 m and soon 10 m class. Yet, this atmospherie limit corresponds in the visible wavelength range to the diffraetion limit of a 20 em telescope only. The loss was severe: a faetor 20 in angular and several hundred in peak energy eoncentration, i. e. in deteetivity of resolution very faint objeets. In the beginning of the seventies, two doors half opened to provide a way out of this dead-end. First, the technique of speckle interferometry (and its various related developments) has allowed to restore the diffraetion limit of large telescopes at visible and infrared wavelengths (see, e. g.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780792327486
Publisher:	Springer Netherlands
Publication date:	03/31/1994
Series:	Nato Science Series C: , #423
Edition description:	1994
Pages:	338
Product dimensions:	8.27(w) x 11.69(h) x 0.36(d)

Table of Contents

I: The problematics of adaptive optics.- to Wave Optics.- Atmospheric Turbulence Optical Effects: Understanding the Adaptive-Optics Implications.- Atmospheric Adaptive Optics Applications.- Modelling Atmospheric Turbulence Effects on Ground-Based Telescope Systems.- Servo-Loop Analysis for Adaptive Optics.- The Problematic of Adaptive Optics Design.- II: Critical components and systems.- Wavefront Sensing.- Optimization of Wavefront Sensors for the Highest Accuracy and Sensitivity.- Deformable Mirrors.- Astronomical Reference Sources.- Sodium-Layer Laser Guide Stars.- Synthetic Beacons for Atmospheric Compensation.- Sodium Beacon Used for Adaptive Optics on the Multiple Mirror Telescope.- Evaluating the Performance of Adaptive Optical Telescopes.- Integrated Adaptive Optics Systems.- Stray Radiation Issues in Astronomical Systems with Adaptive Optics.- Actve Compensation of Global Wavefront Tilts at Solar Telescopes: Present Status of an Electronic Development.- III: Astrophysics with adaptive optics.- The Impact of Adaptive Optics on Focal Plane Instrumentation.- Prospects for Alternative Approaches to Adaptive Optics.- Adaptive Optics for Long Baseline Optical Interferometry.- Astrophysics with Adaptive Optics: Results and Challenges.