Related papers: Ground Layer Adaptive Optics: PSF effects on ELT s…
An explanation for the origin of asymmetry along the preferential axis of the PSF of an AO system is developed. When phase errors from high altitude turbulence scintillate due to Fresnel propagation, wavefront amplitude errors may be…
One of the problems of producing spectrographs for Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) is that the beam size is required to scale with telescope aperture if all other parameters are held constant, leading to enormous size and implied cost.…
The wavelength dependence of atmospheric refraction causes elongation of finite-bandwidth images along the elevation vector, which produces spurious signals in weak gravitational lensing shear measurements unless this atmospheric dispersion…
We systematically investigate the error sources for high-precision astrometry from adaptive optics based near-infrared imaging data. We focus on the application in the crowded stellar field in the Galactic Center. We show that at the level…
We have constructed an analytical model to simulate the behavior of an adaptive optics system coupled with a sodium laser guide star. The code is applied to a 3.6-m and 8m class telescopes. The results are given in terms of Strehl ratio and…
The accuracy of ground-based astronomical photometry is limited by two factors: photon statistics and stellar scintillation arising when star light passes through Earth's atmosphere. This paper examines the theoretical role of the outer…
The major cornerstone of future ground-based astronomy is imaging and spectroscopy at the diffraction limit using adaptive optics. To exploit the potential of current AO systems, we have begun a survey around bright stars to study…
Modern Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs) like the Extremely Large Telescope, which is currently under construction, depend heavily on Adaptive Optics (AO) systems to correct for atmospheric distortions. However, a residual blur…
A semi analytic framework for simulating the effects of atmospheric seeing in Adaptive Optics systems on an 8-m telescope is developed with the intention of understanding the origin of the wind-butterfly, a characteristic two-lobed halo in…
Geometric optics approximation is sufficient to describe the effects in the near-Earth environment. In this framework Faraday rotation is purely a reference frame (gauge) effect. However, it cannot be simply dismissed. Establishing local…
Adaptive optics (AO) systems have significantly improved astronomical imaging capabilities over the last decade, and are revolutionizing the kinds of science possible with 4-5m class ground-based telescopes. A thorough understanding of AO…
The laws of geometric optics and their corrections are derived for scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational waves propagating in generic curved spacetimes. Local peeling-type results are obtained, where different components of…
We investigate the ellipticity of the point-spread function (PSF) produced by imaging an unresolved source with a telescope, subject to the effects of atmospheric turbulence. It is important to quantify these effects in order to understand…
Photonic lanterns (PLs) are tapered waveguides that gradually transition from a multi-mode fiber geometry to a bundle of single-mode fibers. In astronomical applications, PLs can efficiently couple multi-mode telescope light into a…
The effects of photon noise, aliasing, wavefront chromaticity and scintillation on the point spread function (PSF) contrast achievable with ground based adaptive optics (AO) are evaluated for different wavefront sensing schemes. I show that…
Full sky coverage Adaptive Optics on Extremely Large Telescopes requires the adoption of several Laser Guide Stars as references.With such large apertures, the apparent elongation of the beacons is absolutely significant.With few…
Differential magnification is now well-known to distort the spectral energy distributions of strongly gravitationally lensed galaxies. However, that does not mean that any distortions are possible. Here I prove an analytic upper bound to…
Ground-based imagers at 8m class telescopes assisted by Multi conjugate Adaptive Optics are primary facilities to obtain accurate photometry and proper motions in dense stellar fields. We observed the central region of the globular clusters…
Various structures are visible within Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument (SPHERE) images that are not always straightforward to interpret. In this article we present a review of these features and demonstrate…
Observational tests of ground layer wavefront recovery have been made in open loop using a constellation of four natural guide stars at the 1.55 m Kuiper telescope in Arizona. Such tests explore the effectiveness of wide-field seeing…