Related papers: Wide Field Wavefront Sensing
Ground-based solar observations are severely affected by Earth's turbulent atmosphere. As a consequence, observed image quality and prevailing seeing conditions are closely related. Partial correction of image degradation is nowadays…
In astronomy, upcoming space telescopes with wide-field optical instruments have a spatially varying point spread function (PSF). Specific scientific goals require a high-fidelity estimation of the PSF at target positions where no direct…
The wavefront sensors used today at the biggest World's telescopes have either a high dynamic range or a high sensitivity, and they are subject to a linear trade off between these two parameters. A new class of wavefront sensors, the…
In an effort to transcend the limitations of differential imaging of exoplanets in the era of extremely large telescopes (ELTs), the first paper in this series established a rigorous, fully polarimetric framework for determining the science…
Wave front sensing of the surface of equal phase for a propagating electromagnetic wave is a vital technology in fields ranging from real time adaptive optics, to high accuracy metrology, to medical optometry. We have developed a new method…
Dark wavefront sensing takes shape following quantum mechanics concepts in which one is able to "see" an object in one path of a two-arm interferometer using an as low as desired amount of light actually "hitting" the occulting object. A…
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…
The 2.5m Isaac Newton Telescope(INT) is currently being used to carry out a major multi-colour, multi-epoch, CCD based wide field survey over an area of 100 square degrees. The survey parameters have been chosen to maximise scientific…
Magnetic-field sensing has contributed to the formulation of the plate-tectonics theory, the discovery and mapping of underground structures on Earth, and the study of magnetism in other planets. Filling the gap between space-based and…
Low wind and petaling effects, caused by the discontinuous apertures of telescopes, are poorly corrected -- if at all -- by commonly used workhorse wavefront sensors (WFSs). Wavefront petaling breaks the coherence of the point spread…
The Wide-Field Spectroscopic Telescope (WST) is a concept for a 12-m class seeing-limited telescope providing two concentric fields of view for simultaneous Multi-Object Spectroscopy and Integral Field Spectroscopy. The specified wavelength…
Atmospheric optical turbulence seriously limits the performance of high angular resolution instruments. An 8-night campaign of measurements was carried out at the LAMOST site in 2011, to characterize the optical turbulence. Two instruments…
A wide field space-based imaging telescope is necessary to fully exploit the technique of observing dark matter via weak gravitational lensing. This first paper in a three part series outlines the survey strategies and relevant instrumental…
Astronomers working with faint targets will benefit greatly from improved image quality on current and planned ground-based telescopes. At present, most adaptive optic systems are targeted at the highest resolution with bright guide stars.…
Adaptive optics to correct current telescopes over wide fields, or future very large telescopes over even narrow fields, will require real-time wavefront measurements made with a constellation of laser beacons. Here we report the first such…
Observations of the Sun from the Earth are always limited by the presence of the atmosphere, which strongly disturbs the images. A solution to this problem is to place the telescopes in space satellites, which produce observations without…
Adaptive optics is a technique mostly used on large telescopes. It turns out to be challenging for smaller telescopes (0.5~2m) due to the small isoplanatic angle, small subapertures and high correction speeds needed at visible wavelengths,…
For the sake of complete theoretical research of atmospheric refraction, the atmospheric refraction under the condition of lower angles of elevation is still worthy to be analyzed and explored. In some engineering applications, the objects…
Wavefront sensors (WFS) are now core components in the fields of metrology of optical systems, biomedical optics and adaptive optics systems for astronomy. Nowadays, the most popular WFS is the Shack-Hartmann, which is fully static but…
Augmenting the \emph{WFIRST} microlensing campaigns with intensive observations from a ground-based network of wide-field survey telescopes would have several major advantages. First, it would enable full two-dimensional (2-D) vector…