Design and early results of the sodium-layer laser guide star adaptive optics experiment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- and others
Adaptive optic systems promise to give diffraction limited performance to ground based telescopes operating at visible and near infrared wavelengths. However, because of the short spatial scale of atmospheric turbulence, the corrected field of view is limited to only a few arc seconds in the visible, to perhaps 10 arc seconds at L band (3.5 {mu}). A bright point source must be in this field of view as a wavefront reference, but the number density of natural stars is too small for full sky coverage at imaging wavelengths less than 3{mu}. A sufficiently bright point source can be artificially generated by a laser however, and investigations into the use of laser beacons has been proceeding for some time now. Our experiments at Livermore have concentrated on the formation of guide stars in the sodium mesospheric layer at 90 km altitude. We have also designed and built adaptive optics systems that use both artificial and natural guide stars. Experimental results to date have shown great promise for the practicality of this technique in astronomy.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 10123129
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-114837; CONF-9308215-1; ON: DE94006653; TRN: 94:004549
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ICO-16 satellite conference on active and adaptive optics,Garching (Germany),2-5 Aug 1993; Other Information: PBD: 30 Jul 1993
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Sodium guide star adaptive optics system for astronomical imaging in the visible and near-infrared
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