7012ASTPHY
Adaptive Optics in Astrophysics
From basic principles to modern implementations
Lecturer: Steve Longmore
Lecture Outline
• Importance of AO for astronomy
• Basic concepts
• Basic components of AO system
• Modern examples
Suggested reading:
• Sections 6.5 & 6.6 of Chromey
• Sections 5.8 and 5.8.1 of Hecht’s Optics
• Sections 7.1-7.6 of Rieke
Lecture Outline
• Importance of AO for astronomy
• Basic concepts
• Basic components of AO system
• Modern examples
Suggested reading:
• Sections 6.5 & 6.6 of Chromey
• Sections 5.8 and 5.8.1 of Hecht’s Optics
• Sections 7.1-7.6 of Rieke
Lecture Outline
• Importance of AO for astronomy
• Basic concepts
• Basic components of AO system
• Modern examples
Suggested reading:
• Sections 6.5 & 6.6 of Chromey
• Sections 5.8 and 5.8.1 of Hecht’s Optics
• Sections 7.1-7.6 of Rieke
Lecture Outline
• Importance of AO for astronomy
• Basic concepts
• Basic components of AO system
• Modern examples
Suggested reading:
• Sections 6.5 & 6.6 of Chromey
• Sections 5.8 and 5.8.1 of Hecht’s Optics
• Sections 7.1-7.6 of Rieke
Index of refraction inhomogeneities
Index of refraction inhomogeneities
Circles of various sizes represent atmospheric cells with different density, temperature and
humidity.
This leads to higher (blue) or lower (red) index of refraction than the average.
An initially flat wavefront gets distorted as it travels down Earth’s atmosphere.
The overall degradation in image quality is called seeing.
Refractive index profile
• Lots of turbulence at low
altitude put telescopes on
top of mountains!
• Time varying
• Need to model this
understand how to correct
the changes in refractive
index
Characterizing the effects of atmospheric turbulence on wavefronts
• Atmospheric model
– Assume turbulence occurs at single height, h
– Coherent cells of constant refractive index
– Constant wind velocity, v
– “Frozen Flow” (Taylor’s hypothesis: true if vturb <vwind )
• r0 = Fried (free-d) parameter
– Diameter (!) over which a wavefront remains unperturbed
𝑟0 ∝ 𝜆(6∕5)
– (Diameter over which the phase changes by 1 radian)
–
• 0 = isoplanatic angle
– Angle subtended by r0 at height h
– 0 ~ 0.31 (𝑟0 / h)
• t0 = coherence time
– Given wind velocity, v, t0 is the time taken for turbulent cell to move is
own length
– t0 ~ 0.31 (r0 / v )
• f0 = coherence frequency
– f0 ~ 1/(2 t0) ~ v / (2 r0)
[Link]
Implications of atmospheric model
Ang. Res. = 1.22 𝜆 / 𝑟0 Largest diffraction limited telescope has primary mirror diameter r0
Lecture Outline
• Importance of AO for astronomy
• Basic concepts
• Basic components of AO system
• Modern examples
Suggested reading:
• Sections 6.5 & 6.6 of Chromey
• Sections 5.8 and 5.8.1 of Hecht’s Optics
• Sections 7.1-7.6 of Rieke
Lecture Outline
• Importance of AO for astronomy
• Basic concepts
• Basic components of AO system
• Modern examples
Suggested reading:
• Sections 6.5 & 6.6 of Chromey
• Sections 5.8 and 5.8.1 of Hecht’s Optics
• Sections 7.1-7.6 of Rieke
Basic components of AO system
Goal = correct atmospheric distortion
Principle = (i) measure, (ii) remove distortion
Basic components of AO system
Goal = correct atmospheric distortion
Principle = (i) measure, (ii) remove distortion
Basic components of AO system
Goal = correct atmospheric distortion
Principle = (i) measure, (ii) remove distortion
Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor
•In a perfectly flat wavefront, images by each
lenslet are centrally located
•Wavefront distortions cause the images by each
lenslet to be shifted
•The size and direction of the shifts make
possible measuring the direction of each mini-
isoplanatic area, and thus the shape of the
wavefront
•Because the light of the AO guide star is split
into a large number of images, it needs to be
bright
Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor
Inverse Shack-Hartmann to measure human eye aberration
[Link]
Basic components of AO system
Goal = correct atmospheric distortion
Principle = (i) measure, (ii) remove distortion
Basic components of AO system
Goal = correct atmospheric distortion
Principle = (i) measure, (ii) remove distortion
Basic components of AO system
Goal = correct atmospheric distortion
Principle = (i) measure, (ii) remove distortion
[Link]
Basic components of AO system
Goal = correct atmospheric distortion Requirements:
• Must have enough degrees of freedom to
Principle = (i) measure, (ii) remove distortion enable required wavefront correction
• Must be smooth, particularly in scales
smaller than those corrected
• Must be easily controlled, e.g., be moved
fast and be free of hysteresis (i.e., accuracy o
reproduction of a given shape should be
independent of previous one)
• Low power dissipation, so as not to add its
own source of turbulence
• Large dynamic range (deformable to up to 5
(15) μm in a 10 (30) m telescope
[Link]
Constraints on AO systems
• 𝑟0 : Fried parameter
This requires
– Size of the wavefront footprint on the
primary mirror that requires individual
correction
• 0 : Isoplanatic angle
– Angular distance from a guide star within
which good AO correction can be achieved
• f0 : Coherence frequency
– Frequency with which the optics needs
correction in order to generate good image
quality
Basic components of AO system
Goal = correct atmospheric distortion
Principle = (i) measure, (ii) remove distortion
Basic components of AO system
Goal = correct atmospheric distortion
Principle = (i) measure, (ii) remove distortion
Laser Guide Stars
• Requirement that guide stars are bright and
the relatively small size of isoplanatic areas
poses strong limitations on sky coverage
achieved by NGS systems: typically ~1%
• Therefore, most objects will not be within
the isoplanatic angle of a natural guide star
that is bright enough
• The laser guide star concept was devised to
address this limitation
• It consists of shooting a laser beam in order
to create an artificial star that can be used in
place of the natural guide star
The Gemini North laser
Laser Guide Stars (LGS)
There are two types of LGS systems:
• Rayleigh scattering: is created with a pulsed laser and reaches only out to
10-20 km height. Small fraction of the energy is scattered back by atoms and
molecules in the atmosphere
- Rayleigh scattering laser reaches relatively low heights, so doesn’t sample all
atmospheric turbulence.
• Sodium layer: laser at λ = 589 nm excites sodium present at a layer
located at a height of 90 km.
- Enables a better correction, as it samples most layers of the atmosphere, but
it is difficult to obtain enough power at these wavelengths. Moreover,
brightness is limited by amount of Na atoms available in the sodium layer.
LGS vs NGS
• LGS misses perturbations above
90 km (better than Rayleigh scatter
case, which misses those above 20
km)
• Upcoming beam is also affected
by turbulence, which is difficult, or
impossible, to correct (except for
tip/tilt, which can be corrected by
resort to a natural guide star)
• Overall, quality of correction is
better with NGS than with LGS
• Present same issues regarding
variation of image quality as a
function of distance from guide star
(see below), so field of view is small
Comparison between NGS and LGS correction for same field
The LGS Cone Effect
Beam coming from
object of interest
90 km
Missing data
• The path of the LGS is different than that of source at infinity.
• The LGS projects a conical (not parallel) beam through atmospheric turbulence
layers.
Multi Conjugate AO
Use of multiple LGSs
address these issues
90 km
The MCAO technique uses multiple LGS and as many wavefront sensors and
deformable mirrors. Since turbulence happens in multiple layers, it can improve on
the inversion of the turbulence profile “conjugating” each separately.
MCAO
• MCAO addresses the cone effect,
since multiple beams provide better
From the Gemini Newsletter, Issue #19, December, 1999.
coverage of areas of turbulence
• Final effect is coverage over a much
larger field of view (see simulated data
to the right)
• PSF is also much more stable across
the field of view
Strehl ratio: measuring the improvement in angular resolution
S is the ratio of the central intensity
in the real point-spread function to
that in the ideal psf for that
telescope (i.e., the Airy or
diffraction function.
For a seeing-limited telescope the
Strehl ratio is given by
Where D is the telescope diameter
Lecture Outline
• Importance of AO for astronomy
• Basic concepts
• Basic components of AO system
• Modern examples
Suggested reading:
• Sections 6.5 & 6.6 of Chromey
• Sections 5.8 and 5.8.1 of Hecht’s Optics
• Sections 7.1-7.6 of Rieke
Lecture Outline
• Importance of AO for astronomy
• Basic concepts
• Basic components of AO system
• Modern examples
Suggested reading:
• Sections 6.5 & 6.6 of Chromey
• Sections 5.8 and 5.8.1 of Hecht’s Optics
• Sections 7.1-7.6 of Rieke
Slide adapted from François Rigaut
M13 with
Gemini
Acquisition Cam:V Band, 30 sec
Seeing limited (0.85 arcsec)
22’’x22’’ subimage
Slide adapted from François Rigaut
M13 with
Gemini
Acquisition Cam:V Band, 30 sec
Seeing limited (0.85 arcsec)
22’’x22’’ subimage
Hokupa’a+Quirc: K’ filter
15mn. FWHM ~ 92 mas
K’lim=24.1, 5s in 1hr
Note the improvement on
sensitivity, as many faint stars are
now visible that were not
apparent in the image without AO
correction
Galactic centre
Lecture Outline
• Importance of AO for astronomy
• Basic concepts
• Basic components of AO system
• Modern examples
Suggested reading:
• Sections 6.5 & 6.6 of Chromey
• Sections 5.8 and 5.8.1 of Hecht’s Optics
• Sections 7.1-7.6 of Rieke
