Measurements of Tilt and Focus for Sodium Beacon Adaptive Optics on the Starfire 3.5 Meter Telescope

Abstract

Telescopes with 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. We characterize the performance of a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with 2x2 sub-apertures for measuring tilt and focus. Specifically, we implemented this scheme for the sodium beacon adaptive optics upgrade to the Starfire Optical Range (SOR) 3.5 meter telescope. We use a wave-optics simulation to predict the performance of the tilt and focus sensor in the SOR sodium beacon system, and compare the results to laboratory measurements.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA531697

Entities

People

  • James Brown
  • James Spinhirne
  • 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
  • Charge Coupled Devices
  • Control Systems
  • Deformable Mirrors
  • Detectors
  • Diffusion
  • Measurement
  • Optics
  • Quantum Efficiency
  • Simulations
  • Telescopes
  • Transfer Functions
  • Wavefronts

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Image Processing and Computer Vision.
  • Phased Array Antenna Design.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Space
  • Space - Space Objects