Related papers: Closed-form expressions for the centroid-tilt erro…
The atmospheric scintillation of stars is the main limitation of the accuracy of ground-based photometry of astronomical objects. This becomes particularly noticeable for a study of a variability with amplitudes on the order to thousandths…
We describe a new concept to correct for scintillation noise on high-precision photometry in large and extremely large telescopes using telemetry data from adaptive optics (AO) systems. Most wide-field AO systems designed for the current…
Many adaptive optics systems operate by measuring the distortion of the wavefront in one wavelength range and performing the scientific observations in a second, different wavelength range. One common technique is to measure wavefront…
We present a theory for wave scintillation in the situation with a time-dependent partially coherent source and a time-dependent randomly heterogeneous medium. Our objective is to understand how the scintillation index of the measured…
Measurements of the optical turbulence profile above Siding Spring Observatory were conducted during 2005 and 2006. This effort was largely motivated by the need to predict the statistical performance of adaptive optics at Siding Spring.…
The Swift X-ray Telescope focal plane camera is a front-illuminated MOS CCD, providing a spectral response kernel of 135 eV FWHM at 5.9 keV as measured before launch. We describe the CCD calibration program based on celestial and on-board…
Radiation damage to space-based Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) detectors creates defects which result in an increasing Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) that causes spurious image trailing. Most of the trailing can be corrected during…
The family of multi-plane phase retrieval sensors, such as the curvature and nonlinear curvature wavefront sensors (WFS), contain tip/tilt information embedded in their signals. We have built a nonlinear curvature WFS to study different…
We present a fitting function to describe the statistics of flux modulations caused by interstellar scintillation. The function models a very general quantity: the cross-correlation of the flux observed from a compact radio source of finite…
Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors using wound fibre bundles are desired for multi-object adaptive optical systems to provide large multiplex positioned by Starbugs. The use of the large-sized wound fibre bundle provides the exibility to use…
Scintillator detectors electronics is recalibrated against the datasheet given by the manufacturer. Optimal and mutual dependent values of (a) high voltage at PMT (Photomultiplier Tube), (b) amplifier gain, (c) average time to count the…
Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing relies on accurate spot centre measurement. Several algorithms were developed with this aim, mostly focused on precision, i.e. minimizing random errors. In the solar and extended scene community, the…
A catadioptric sensor induces a projection between a given object surface and an image plane. The prescribed projection problem is the problem of finding a catadioptric sensor that realizes a given projection. Here we present a functional…
Accurately measuring the atmospheric coherence time is still an important problem despite a variety of applicable methods. The Multi-aperture scintillation sensor (MASS) designed for the vertical profiling of optical turbulence, also…
Camera calibration using planar targets has been widely favored, and two types of control points have been mainly considered as measurements: the corners of the checkerboard and the centroid of circles. Since a centroid is derived from…
Setting up an empirical model of optical sensing to exploit the circular Bragg phenomenon displayed by chiral sculptured thin films (CSTFs), we considered a CSTF with and without a central twist defect of $\pi/2$ radians. The circular Bragg…
Silicon photonic wavefront phase-tilt sensors for wavefront monitoring using surface coupling grating arrays are demonstrated. The first design employs the intrinsic angle dependence of the grating coupling efficiency to determine local…
Context. The diffusion of adaptive optics systems in astronomical instrumentation for large ground-based telescopes is rapidly increasing and the pyramid wavefront sensor is replacing the Shack-Hartmann as the standard solution for single…
Atmospheric profiling is a requirement for controlling wide-field Adaptive Optics (AO) instruments, analyzing the AO performance with respect to the observing conditions and predicting the Point Spread Function (PSF) spatial variations. We…
Refractive scintillation effects are powerful techniques for discriminating between different models proposed for the electron density fluctuation spectrum in the ISM. Data from our long-term scintillation study of 18 pulsars in the DM…