Long Exposure Point Spread Function Estimation from Solar Adaptive Optics Loop Data

Details Long Exposure Point Spread Function Estimation from Solar Adaptive Optics Loop Data Long Exposure Point Spread Function Estimation from Solar Adaptive Optics Loop Data

May 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007phdt........41m&link_type=abstract

PhD Thesis, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 2007

Physics

Optics

2

Adaptive Optics, Point Spread Function, Solar Physics

Scientific paper

Adaptive optics (AO) systems provide partial correction to wavefront distortions introduced by the Earth's atmosphere. They have become an essential tool to obtain diffraction-limited observations from ground-based telescopes. However, the AO correction is only partial and post-processing with a good estimate of the point spread function (PSF) is required. PSF estimates are impossible to measure directly during solar observations due to the lack of point sources in the field-of-view. Moreover, the highly variable day-time seeing conditions require the estimated PSF to be simultaneous with the captured image. A method is presented to estimate the long-exposure PSF of AO-corrected solar observations using the AO control loop data. The wavefront sensor and the deformable mirror data produced by the AO system during normal operation provide enough information to estimate the long-exposure PSF. Using this method, each individual AO-corrected image can be deconvolved with its own estimated PSF. An attempt was made to verify the accuracy of the method by observing the star Sirius. The AO system successfully produced AO-corrected star images, which provide direct PSF measurements that can be compared to the estimated PSF. However, the poor performance of the AO system under low light levels, for which it was not designed, led to large uncertainties in the estimated PSFs. The PSF estimation method was tested on real solar observations, where an estimation of the AO-corrected PSF is normally difficult. The observations were deconvolved with the estimated PSFs, producing significantly improved quantitative measurements and scientific data. A measurement of the performance of the solar AO during different seeing conditions was obtained for the first time from these observations.

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