Measuring Tilt and Focus for Sodium Beacon Adaptive Optics on the Starfile 3.5 Meter Telescope -- Conference Proceedings (Preprint)

Abstract

Adaptive optics systems can measure high-order aberrations using an artificial laser beacon without the need for a relatively bright object near the object being imaged. Unfortunately, tilt and focus measurements are difficult to obtain from a laser beacon. One solution is to use light from the object being imaged to measure tilt and focus. Through analysis, I estimate the performance of using a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with 2 by 2 subapertures for measuring tilt and focus. Specifically, I discuss implementing this scheme for the sodium beacon adaptive optics upgrade to the Starfire Optical Range (SOR) 3.5 m telescope. I use wave-optics simulation tools to evaluate the performance of the tilt and focus sensor in the SOR sodium beacon system.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA487991

Entities

People

  • Robert Johnson

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Adaptive Optics
  • Air Force
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Atmospheric Motion
  • Avalanche Photodiodes
  • Background Noise
  • Charge Coupled Devices
  • Control Systems
  • Deformable Mirrors
  • Detectors
  • Electrons
  • Measurement
  • Optics
  • Simulations
  • Telescopes
  • Wavefronts

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Image Processing and Computer Vision.
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Space
  • Space - Space Objects