Field tests of wavefront sensing with multiple Rayleigh laser guide stars and dynamic refocus

Thomas E. Stalcup Jr.; James A. Georges III; Miguel Snyder; Christoph Baranec; Nicole Putnam; N. Mark Milton; James Roger P. Angel; Michael Lloyd-Hart

doi:10.1117/12.551952

25 October 2004 Field tests of wavefront sensing with multiple Rayleigh laser guide stars and dynamic refocus

Thomas E. Stalcup Jr., James A. Georges III, Miguel Snyder, Christoph Baranec, Nicole Putnam, N. Mark Milton, James Roger P. Angel, Michael Lloyd-Hart

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 5490, Advancements in Adaptive Optics; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.551952
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2004, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Abstract

A demonstration of tomographic wavefront sensing has been designed, fabricated, and tested. The last of the initial testing of the dynamic refocus system at the 61" telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona is presented, along with the first results from the system after its transfer to the 6.5 m MMT on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona. This system consists of a laser beam projector, and a wavefront sensor at the telescope's Cassegrain focus. The projector transmits 5 pulsed 532 nm beams in a regular pentagon of 2 arcminutes diameter from behind the telescope's secondary mirror that in good seeing can yield sub-arcsecond beacons over a 20-30 km altitude range. The wavefront sensor incorporates a dynamic refocus unit to track each returning laser pulse, and a multiple laser beacon Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor using a novel substitute for the traditional lenslet array. A natural guide star wavefront sensor was also fielded to collect ground-truth data to compare with wavefronts reconstructed from the laser wavefront sensor measurements. All of the subsystems were shown to work, but bad weather ended the testing before the final data could be collected.

Citation Download Citation

Thomas E. Stalcup Jr., James A. Georges III, Miguel Snyder, Christoph Baranec, Nicole Putnam, N. Mark Milton, James Roger P. Angel, and Michael Lloyd-Hart "Field tests of wavefront sensing with multiple Rayleigh laser guide stars and dynamic refocus", Proc. SPIE 5490, Advancements in Adaptive Optics, (25 October 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.551952

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