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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Performance Impacts For Actuator Misalignments And Failures In Large- Aperture Adaptive-Optic Telescopes, Timothy D. Hogan
Performance Impacts For Actuator Misalignments And Failures In Large- Aperture Adaptive-Optic Telescopes, Timothy D. Hogan
Theses and Dissertations
Large-aperture telescopes require adaptive optics in order to compensate for atmospheric turbulence which would otherwise negate the resolution advantages of using large apertures. This investigation analyzes the impacts of misalignments and failures, in the deformable mirror actuators, upon the performance of such systems. A numerical simulation of a standard adaptive optics system is used to generate characteristic optical transfer function OTF and signal-to-noise ratio SNR performance metrics. The performance impacts of the misalignments are shown to be dependent upon the Fried parameter effective telescope diameter, the source object brightness, and the control system time delay. The degree of performance degradation …
Characterization Of Laboratory Generated Turbulence By Optical Phase Measurements, Eric P. Magee
Characterization Of Laboratory Generated Turbulence By Optical Phase Measurements, Eric P. Magee
Theses and Dissertations
The resolution achieved by an optical imaging system in the presence of the random effects of the atmosphere is severely degraded from the theoretical diffraction limit. Techniques exist for recovering near diffraction limited performance of an imaging system in the presence of atmospheric turbulence. As opposed to laboratory testing, testing image enhancement techniques in the Earth's atmosphere imposes many limitations. Unfavorable weather conditions could result in the loss of time and money invested in conducting the experiments. With a properly characterized turbulence generator, with statistics that match those of the atmosphere, experimental testing of image enhancement techniques can be conducted …