Wavefront error of PHI/HRT on Solar Orbiter at various heliocentric distances
Abstract
We use wavefront sensing to characterise the image quality of the the High Resolution Telescope (HRT) of the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (SO/PHI) data products during the second remote sensing window of the Solar Orbiter (SO) nominal mission phase. Our ultimate aims are to reconstruct the HRT data by deconvolving with the HRT point spread function (PSF) and to correct for the effects of optical aberrations on the data. We use a pair of focused--defocused images to compute the wavefront error and derive the PSF of HRT by means of a phase diversity (PD) analysis. The wavefront error of HRT depends on the orbital distance of SO to the Sun. At distances \,au, the wavefront error is small, and stems dominantly from the inherent optical properties of HRT. At distances \,au, the thermo-optical effect of the Heat Rejection Entrance Window (HREW) becomes noticeable. We develop an interpolation scheme for the wavefront error that depends on the thermal variation of the HREW with the distance of SO to the Sun. We also introduce a new level of image reconstruction, termed `aberration correction', which is designed to reduce the noise caused by image deconvolution while removing the aberrations caused by the HREW. The computed PSF via phase diversity significantly reduces the degradation caused by the HREW in the near-perihelion HRT data. In addition, the aberration correction increases the noise by a factor of only compared to the factor of increase that results from the usual PD reconstructions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2306.00163,
title = {Wavefront error of PHI/HRT on Solar Orbiter at various heliocentric distances},
author = {F. Kahil and A. Gandorfer and J. Hirzberger and D. Calchetti and J. Sinjan and G. Valori and S. K. Solanki and M. Van Noort and K. Albert and N. Albelo Jorge and A. Alvarez-Herrero and T. Appourchaux and L. R. Bellot Rubio and J. Blanco Rodrí guez and A. Feller and B. Fiethe and D. Germerott and L. Gizon and L. Guerrero and P. Gutierrez-Marques and M. Kolleck and A. Korpi-Lagg and H. Michalik and A. Moreno Vacas and D. Orozco Su\' arez and I. P\' erez-Grande and E. Sanchis Kilders and J. Schou and U. Sch\" uhle and J. Staub and H. Strecker and J. C. del Toro iniesta and R. Volkmer and J. Woch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.00163},
year = {2023}
}