Curvature Wavefront Sensor For Solar Adaptive Optics

Active or adaptive optics often require the ability to characterize wavefront aberrations using natural extended sources. The task becomes especially challenging when dealing with widely extended sources such as the solar granulation. We propose a new approach based on the processing of oppositely defocused images. This method, which is a generalization of a technique known as curvature sensing, derives the wavefront curvature from the difference between two oppositely defocused images and determines the second momenta of the point spread function. The proposed method measures the wavefront aberration from the images themselves, requires little computational resources, is fast enough to be used in a real-time adaptive optics system and is particularly adapted to random patterns such as solar granulation or spot penumbras whose morphology evolves during the observation. We envision the application of the method to real-time seeing compensation in solar astronomical telescopes, and to the correction of optical system aberrations in remote sensing instrumentation. This effort is directed towards building a curvature sensor for the real-time applications.     

An iterative wavefront sensing algorithm for high-contrast imaging systems

Wavefront sensing from multiple focal plane images is a promising technique for high-contrast imaging systems.However,the wavefront error of an optics system can be properly reconstructed only when it is very small.This paper presents an iterative optimization algorithm for the direct measurement of large static wavefront errors from only one focal plane image.We first measure the intensity of the pupil image to get the pupil function of the system and acquire the aberrated image on the focal plane with a p...     

Optimal Compensation and Implementation for Adaptive Optics Systems

This paper develops a compensation algorithm based on Linear–Quadratic–Gaussian (LQG) control system design whose parameters are determined (in part) by a model of the atmosphere. The model for the atmosphere is based on the open-loop statistics of the atmosphere as observed by the wavefront sensor, and is identified from these using an auto-regressive, moving average (ARMA) model. The (LQG) control design is compared with an existing compensation algorithm for a simulation developed at ESO that represents the operation of MACAO adaptive optics system on the 8.2 m telescopes at Paranal, Chile. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Near-focus high-sensitivity wavefront sensing

A new method of wavefront sensing that uses a pair of equally defocused images to derive the wavefront aberrations is presented. Unlike in conventional curvature-sensing systems, the sensor works in a near-focus regime where the transport of intensity equation is not valid, and, unlike in phase-diversity methods, a non-iterative algorithm is used to infer the wavefront aberrations. The sensor designs outlined only require a small number of detector pixels: two designs with five and nine pixels per plane are analysed, and the nine-element sensor (NES) is shown to have a competitive measurement sensitivity compared with existing low-order astronomical wavefront sensors. The NES is thus well suited to applications such as adaptive optics for the individual telescopes in an optical interferometer array.     

A z-invariant Rayleigh beacon wavefront sensor

An innovative concept of wavefront sensing for Rayleigh beacons is introduced along with an example of a possible wavefront sensor. This new approach does not require the gating technique to limit the useful range of the laser source and therefore looks simpler to implement than previous Rayleigh concepts, and may additionally allow more efficient use of the photons emitted by the Rayleigh beacon. Our technique is based upon an optical element in the focal plane area whose section does not change for the conjugation of different ranges from the telescope aperture, hence the name z -invariant. The wavefront sensor shown here is an example of this new class. It is a compact pupil-plane wavefront sensor and as such allows for a layer-oriented configuration. It is shown that its sensitivity, while higher than usual gating approaches, is far from the possible limits leading us to speculate that other z -invariant wavefront sensors can reach much larger efficiencies.     

Phasing of segmented mirrors: a new algorithm for piston detection

The point spread function of a segmented-mirror telescope is severely affected by segment misalignment, which can nullify the performance of adaptive optics systems. The piston and tilt of each segment must be precisely adjusted in relation to the other segments. Furthermore, the direct detection of the alignment error with natural stars would be desirable in order to monitor the errors during astronomical observation.
We have studied the lost information of the piston error caused by the presence of atmospheric turbulence in the measurements of curvature, and present a new algorithm for obtaining the local piston using the curvature sensor. A phase-wrapping effect is shown as responsible for the loss of curvature information and so the piston errors can no longer adequately be mapped; this happens not only in the presence of atmospheric turbulence, but also in its absence.
Good results are obtained using a new iterative method for obtaining the local piston error map. In the presence of atmospheric perturbation, the turbulent phase information obtained from a Shack–Hartmann sensor is introduced in our new iterative method. We propose a hybrid sensor composed of a curvature sensor and a Shack–Hartmann sensor, in order to complete all the information for the phasing. This design takes a short computation time and could be used in real time inside an adaptive optics system, where tilt and piston errors must be corrected.     

基于四棱锥传感器的波前检测仿真设计

波前检测是天文望远镜自适应光学中的重要环节。四棱锥作为一种新型的波前检测元件,与其他传统的波前传感器相比,具有较高的灵敏度。特别是对于光干涉或拼接镜面望远镜而言,四棱锥波前传感器能够被用来检测子望远镜或子镜面之间的相对光程差,从而为干涉(或共相)的实现提供有效的检测信号。在分析四棱锥波前检测原理的基础上,阐述了单孔径条件下波前倾斜检测及双孔径干涉条件下相对光程差检测的软件仿真设计和阶段性成果,并简述了下一阶段的研究计划。     

The Wave-Front Correction System for the Sunrise Balloon-Borne Solar Observatory

This paper describes the wave-front correction system developed for the Sunrise balloon telescope, and it provides information about its in-flight performance. For the correction of low-order aberrations, a Correlating Wave-Front Sensor (CWS) was used. It consisted of a six-element Shack??C?Hartmann wave-front sensor (WFS), a fast tip-tilt mirror for the compensation of image motion, and an active telescope secondary mirror for focus correction. The CWS delivered a stabilized image with a precision of 0.04?arcsec (rms), whenever the coarse pointing was better than ???45?arcsec peak-to-peak. The automatic focus adjustment maintained a focus stability of 0.01?waves in the focal plane of the CWS. During the 5.5?day flight, good image quality and stability were achieved during 33?hours, containing 45?sequences, which lasted between 10 and 45?min.     

A Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor projected on to the sky with reduced focal anisoplanatism

A method for producing a laser guide star wavefront sensor for adaptive optics with reduced focal anisoplanatism is presented. A theoretical analysis and numerical simulations have been carried out and the results are presented. The technique, named Sky-Projected Laser Array Shack–Hartmann (SPLASH), is shown to suffer considerably less from focal anisoplanatism than a conventional laser guide star system. The method is potentially suitable for large telescope apertures (∼8 m), and possibly for extremely large telescopes.     

Simulation of adaptive optics for the Vacuum Tower Telescope

A simulation model of the adaptive optics of the German Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT), Observatorio del Teide, Tenerife, is presented. The model uses modules from the integrated model of the Euro50 extremely large telescope, and includes submodels of a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor, a de-formable mirror, a tip-tilt mirror, high-voltage amplifier low-pass filters, a reconstructor and a controller. We investigate the impact on the closed loop bandwidth of changes in controller configuration and certain system parameters, such as low pass filter bandwidth and camera integration and readout time. Control strategies were tested on simple models before implementation on the full VTT model. Using the models, different control strategies are compared.     

Rayleigh Scattering and Laser Spot Elongation Problems at ALFA

This article describes the qualitative effects of LGS spot elongation and Rayleigh scattering on ALFA wavefront sensor images.An analytical model of Rayleigh scattering and a numerical model of laser plume generation at the altitude of the Na-layer were developed. These models, integrated into ageneral AO simulation, provide the sensor sub-apertureimages. It is shown that the centroid measurement accuracyis affected by these phenomena. The simulation was made both for the ALFA system and for the VLT Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System (NAOS).     

Development of a low-order Adaptive Optics system at Udaipur Solar Observatory

A low-order Adaptive Optics (AO) system is being developed at the Udaipur Solar Observatory and we present in this paper the status of the project, which includes the image stabilization system and calibration of wavefront sensor and deformable mirror. The image stabilization system comprises of a piezo driven tip-tilt mirror, a high speed camera (955 fps), a frame grabber system for sensing the overall tilt and a Linux based Intel Pentium 4 control computer with Red Hat Linux OS. The system operates under PID control. In the closed loop, an rms image motion of 0.1–0.2 arcsec was observed with the improvement factor varying from 10–20 depending on the external conditions. Error rejection bandwidth of the system at 0 dB is 80–100 Hz. In addition to that, we report the on-going efforts in the calibration of lenslet array and deformable mirror for sensing and correcting the local tilt of the wavefront.     

An adaptive loop gain selection for CLEAN deconvolution algorithm

Radio interferometry significantly improves the resolution of observed images, and the final result also relies heavily on data recovery. The Cotton-Schwab CLEAN(CS-Clean) deconvolution approach is a widely used reconstruction algorithm in the field of radio synthesis imaging. However, parameter tuning for this algorithm has always been a difficult task. Here, its performance is improved by considering some internal characteristics of the data. From a mathematical point of view, a peak signal-to-noise-based(PSNRbased) method was introduced to optimize the step length of the steepest descent method in the recovery process. We also found that the loop gain curve in the new algorithm is a good indicator of parameter tuning.Tests show that the new algorithm can effectively solve the problem of oscillation for a large fixed loop gain and provides a more robust recovery.     

用于自适应光学系统的激光引导星

自适应光学系统应用于天文观测时应满足一些技术要求,其中的关键技术之一是自适应光学系统为了对畸变的光波进行采样,需要在其很小的等晕角内有足够的信标强度。激光引导星,即人造信标,就是解决这种问题的方法之一。特别是在观测天文暗目标时,其自身的光强度不能为有探测提供信息,激光引导星就蛤得非常重要。根据国际上的最新进展对激光引导星技术给予了介绍。重点介绍了激光引导星的局限性,对近几年提出的对激光引导星可能的     

Improvements on the optical differentiation wavefront sensor

We describe a novel concept for high-resolution wavefront sensing based on the optical differentiation wavefront sensor (OD). It keeps the advantages of high resolution, adjustable dynamic range, ability to work with polychromatic sources and, in addition, it achieves good performance in wavefront reconstruction when the field is perturbed by scintillation. Moreover, this new concept can be used as multi-object wavefront sensor in multiconjugate adaptive optics systems. It is able to provide high resolution and high sampling operation, which is of great interest for the projected extreme adaptive optics systems for large telescopes.     

High-Spatial-Resolution Imaging Combining High-Order Adaptive Optics,Frame Selection,and Speckle Masking Reconstruction

We present, for the first time, high-spatial-resolution observations combining high-order adaptive optics (AO), frame selection, and post-facto image correction via speckle masking. The data analysis is based on observations of solar active region NOAA 10486 taken with the Dunn Solar Telescope (DST) at the Sacramento Peak Observatory (SPO) of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) on 29 October 2003. The high Strehl ratio encountered in AO corrected short-exposure images provides highly improved signal-to-noise ratios leading to a superior recovery of the object’s Fourier phases. This allows reliable detection of small-scale solar features near the diffraction limit of the telescope. Speckle masking imaging provides access to high-order wavefront aberrations, which predominantly originate at high atmospheric layers and are only partially corrected by the AO system. In addition, the observations provided qualitative measures of the image correction away from the lock point of the AO system. We further present a brief inspection of the underlying imaging theory discussing the limitations and prospects of this multi-faceted image reconstruction approach in terms of the recovery of spatial information, photometric accuracy, and spectroscopic applications.The editors apologize to the authors: due to a misunderstanding during the editorial process, the publication of this paper has been delayed.     

Acceleration feedback control(AFC) enhanced by disturbance observation and compensation(DOC) for high precision tracking in telescope systems

In this paper, a cascade acceleration feedback control(AFC) enhanced by a disturbance observation and compensation(DOC) method is proposed to improve the tracking precision of telescope systems.Telescope systems usually suffer some uncertain disturbances, such as wind load, nonlinear friction and other unknown disturbances. To ensure tracking precision, an acceleration feedback loop which can increase the stiffness of such a system is introduced. Moreover, to further improve the tracking precision, we introduce the DOC method which can accurately estimate the disturbance and compensate it. Furthermore,the analysis of tracking accuracy used by this method is proposed. Finally, a few comparative experimental results show that the proposed control method has excellent performance for reducing the tracking error of a telescope system.     

Numerical Study of EUV Wave Phenomenon on 2009 February 13

Combining the observations of STEREO satellites with the method of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) numerical simulation, adopt- ing the magnetic ?eld data of the Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO) and the model of potential ?eld source surface to build up the initial magnetic ?eld in solar corona, and adding a time-varying disturbance of pressure to the active re- gion on the solar surface, the study on the event of coronal mass ejection (CME) and extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) wave happened at 05:35 UT of 2009 February 13 has been performed. It is judged from the images of COR1/STEREO-A that the front speed of this CME is about 350 km·s⁻¹, and the angular width is about 60°. By analyzing the running difference images of EUVI/STEREO-B at 195 ?A, it is found that the bright toroidal wavefront is spreading toward all directions around the active region, and behind the bright toroidal wavefront is a coronal dimming area. The positions of the wavefront in four directions are taken to perform linear ?ttings, it is known that the EUV wave speed is 247 km·s⁻¹, and the EUV wave speed obtained from the numerical simulation is 245 km·s⁻¹. After the IDL visualization program has been carried out for the calculated result, the structures of the bright loop and dimming area can be seen clearly. The numerical simulation is consistent with the satellite observation, which shows that the observed EUV wave may belong to the fast magnetosonic wave.     

基于1.2m望远镜自适应光学系统激光信标转盘式机械快门的研究

基于激光信标发射和接收共光路系统中探测器受杂散光影响的关键问题,设计了一种新型转盘式机械快门装置,对光信号进行高频率开关控制,从而对自适应光学系统的波前探测器起到彻底保护作用.设计时,分析了瑞利信标的采样厚度以及快门开关与脉冲激光器的发射、探测器探测时间的时序控制.     

基于1．2m望远镜白适应光学系统激光信标转盘式机械快门的研究

基于激光信标发射和接收共光路系统中探测器受杂散光影响的关键问题,设计了一种新型转盘式机械快门装置,对光信号进行高频率开关控制,从而对自适应光学系统的波前探测器起到彻底保护作用。设计时,分析了瑞利信标的采样厚度以及快门开关与脉冲激光器的发射、探测器探测时间的时序控制。