Related papers: Sunrise III: The Wavefront Correction System
Context. Solar wavefront sensing has been a challenge for astrophysical instrumentalists, due to the low contrast between the Sun and the sky background compared to night-time observations, which limits the performance of adaptive optics…
The SUNRISE balloon-borne solar observatory, consisting of a 1~m aperture telescope that provided a stabilized image to a UV filter imager and an imaging vector polarimeter, carried out its second science flight in June 2013. It provided…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will use an active optics system (AOS) to maintain alignment and surface figure on its three large mirrors. Corrective actions fed to the LSST AOS are determined from information derived from 4…
Focal plane wavefront sensing and control is a critical approach to reducing non-common path errors between the a conventional astronomical adaptive optics (AO) wavefront sensor (WFS) detector and science camera. However, in addition to…
High-contrast imaging will be a challenge for future ELTs, because their vibrations create low-order aberrations - mostly tip/tilt - that reduce coronagraphic performances at 1.2 lambda/D and above. A Low-Order WaveFront Sensor (LOWFS) is…
Exoplanet detection and characterization through extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) is a key science goal of future extremely large telescopes. This achievement, however, will be limited in sensitivity by both quasi-static wavefront errors and…
Balloon-borne astronomy offers an attractive option for experiments that require precise pointing and attitude stabilization, due to a large reduction in the atmospheric interference observed by ground-based systems as well as the low-cost…
Direct detection of exoplanets requires high dynamic range imaging. Coronagraphs could be the solution, but their performance in space is limited by wavefront errors (manufacturing errors on optics, temperature variations, etc.), which…
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…
High performance coronagraphic imaging of faint structures around bright stars at small angular separations requires fine control of tip, tilt and other low order aberrations. When such errors occur upstream of a coronagraph, they results…
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.…
The third science flight of the balloon-borne solar observatory Sunrise carries three entirely new post-focus science instruments with spectropolarimetric capabilities, concurrently covering an extended spectral range from the near…
A NASA sounding rocket for high-contrast imaging with a visible nulling coronagraph, the PICTURE payload, has made two suborbital attempts to observe the warm dust disk inferred around Epsilon Eridani. The first flight in 2011 demonstrated…
The continual push to directly image exoplanets at lower masses and closer separations orbiting around bright stars remains limited by both quasi-static and residual adaptive optics (AO) aberration. In previous papers we have proposed a…
We describe the design of the Sunrise Filter Imager (SuFI) and the Image Stabilization and Light Distribution (ISLiD) unit onboard the Sunrise balloon borne solar observatory. This contribution provides the necessary information which is…
The ability to characterize exoplanets by spectroscopy of their atmospheres requires direct imaging techniques to isolate planet signal from the bright stellar glare. One of the limitations with the direct detection of exoplanets, either…
The Habitable Worlds Observatory requires active speckle suppression to directly image Earth-like exoplanets. Focal plane wavefront sensing and control allows us to detect, and subsequently remove, time-varying speckles through measurements…
The TP3-WFS (Two Pupil Plane Positions Wavefront Sensor) is, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the first physical implementation of the geometrical wavefront reconstruction algorithm that has been tested in a telescope as part of an…
The crossed-sine wavefront sensor (WFS) is a pupil plane wavefront sensor that measures the first derivatives of the wavefront. It is made by three main components: a gradient transmission filter (GTF) built from a product of sine functions…
Wavefront sensing and control (WFSC) will play a key role in improving the stability of future large segmented space telescopes while relaxing the thermo-mechanical constraints on the observatory structure. Coupled with a coronagraph to…