Untwinkling Stars

SOURAV MONDAL

Electronics & Communication Engineering

Kalyani Govt. Engineering College
“TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE S TAR
HOW I WONDER WHAT YOU ARE!
UP ABOVE THE WORLD S O HIGH
LIKE A DIAMOND IN THE S KY.”
 Keck Telescope’s primary mirror
consists of 36 hexagonal segments

Nasmyth
platform

Person!

Page 49
VIEWING WINDOW
Why is adaptive optics needed?

Turbulence in earth’s
atmosphere makes stars twinkle

More importantly, turbulence

spreads out light; makes it a
blob rather than a point

Even the largest ground-based astronomical

telescopes have
have no better resolution than an
an 8" telescope!
telescope!
Page 11
 Images of a bright star, Arcturus

Lick Observatory, 1 m telescope

 ~ 1 arc sec
 ~  /D

Long exposure Short exposure Image with

image image adaptive optics

Speckles (each is at diffraction limit of telescope)

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Turbulence arises in several places

stratosphere

tropopause

10-12 km

wind flow over dome

boundary layer
~ 1 km

Heat sources w/in dome

Page 14
Atmospheric perturbations
cause distorted wavefronts

Rays not parallel

Index of refraction
Plane Wave variations Distorted
Wavefront

Page 15
 Optical consequences of turbulence

• Temperature fluctuations in small patches of air cause

changes in index of refraction (like many little lenses)
• Light rays are refracted many times (by small amounts)
• When they reach telescope they are no longer parallel
• Hence rays can’t be focused to a point:

 focus
Point
 blur

Parallel light rays Light rays affected by turbulence

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 Imaging through a perfect telescope

With no turbulence,
FWHM is diffraction limit
of telescope,  ~  / D
FWHM ~/D
Example:
1.22 /D  / D = 0.02 arc sec for
 = 1 m, D = 10 m

With turbulence, image

in units of/D size gets much larger
(typically 0.5 - 2 arc sec)
Point Spread Function (PSF):
intensity profile from point source

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 Characterize turbulence strength
by quantity r0

Wavefront
of light

r0 “Fried’s parameter”

Primary mirror of telescope

• “Coherence Length” r0 : distance over which optical

phase distortion has mean square value of 1 rad2
(r0 ~ 15 - 30 cm at good observing sites)

• Easy to remember: r0 = 10cm  FWHM = 1” at  = 0.5m

Page 18
 Effect of turbulence on image size

• If telescope diameter D >> r0 , image size of a point

source is  / r0 >>  / D

 /D
“seeing disk”
 /r0

• r0 is diameter of the circular pupil for which the

diffraction limited image and the seeing limited image
have the same angular resolution.

• r0  10 inches at a good site. So any telescope larger

than this has no better spatial resolution!
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How does adaptive optics help?
(cartoon approximation)
Measure details of Calculate (on a Light from both guide
blurring from computer) the star and astronomical
“guide star” near shape to apply to object is reflected from
the object you deformable mirror deformable mirror;
want to observe to correct blurring distortions are removed

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 Schematic of adaptive optics system

Feedback loop:
next cycle
corrects the
(small) errors
of the last cycle

Page 24
AO produces point spread functions
with a “core” and “halo”
Definition of “Strehl”:
Ratio of peak intensity to
that of “perfect” optical
system
Intensity

• When AO system performs well, more energy in core

• When AO system is stressed (poor seeing), halo
contains larger fraction of energy (diameter ~ r0)
• Ratio between core and halo varies during night
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Adaptive optics increases peak
intensity of a point source
Lick
Observatory

No AO With AO
Intensity

No AO With AO

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Adaptive optics makes it possible to find
faint companions around bright stars

Two images from Palomar of a

brown dwarf companion to GL 105

200” telescope

Credit: David Golimowski

Page 46
How to measure turbulent distortions
(one method among many)

Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor

Page 25
Real deformable mirrors have
continuous surfaces

• In practice, a small deformable mirror with

a thin bendable face sheet is used

• Placed after the main telescope mirror

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Deformable Mirror for real wavefronts
 Most deformable mirrors today
have thin glass face-sheets
Glass face-sheet

Light Cables leading to

mirror’s power
supply (where
voltage is applied)

PZT or PMN actuators:

get longer and shorter
as voltage is changed
Anti-reflection coating
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Adaptive optics system is usually
behind main telescope mirror

• Example: AO system at Lick Observatory’s 3 m

telescope

Support for
main
Adaptive optics
telescope
package below
mirror
main mirror

Page 41
Lick adaptive optics system at 3m
Shane Telescope

DM

Off-axis IRCAL infra-

Wavefront parabola red camera
sensor mirror Page 42
 Deformable mirrors come in many sizes

• Range from 13 to > 900 actuators (degrees of freedom)

About 12”

A couple Xinetics
of inches
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 New developments:
tiny deformable mirrors
• Potential for less cost per degree of freedom

• Liquid crystal devices

– Voltage applied to back of each pixel changes index
of refraction locally

• MEMS devices (micro-electro-mechanical

systems)
Electrostatically
actuated Membrane
Attachment mirror
diaphragm post

Continuous mirror

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 If there’s no close-by “real”
star, create one with a laser

• Use a laser beam to

create artificial
“star” at altitude of
100 km in
atmosphere

Page 33
 Laser is operating at Lick Observatory,
being commissioned at Keck

Keck Observatory

Lick
Observatory
Page 34
Astronomical observatories with
AO on 3-5 m telescopes

• ESO 3.6 m telescope, Chile

• Canada France Hawaii

• William Herschel Telescope, Canary Islands

• Mt. Wilson, CA

• Lick Observatory, CA

• Mt. Palomar, CA

• Calar Alto, Spain

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Palomar adaptive optics system

AO system is in
Cassegrain cage

200” Hale telescope

Page 45
 The new generation:
adaptive optics on 8-10 m telescopes

Summit of Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii:

Subaru

2 Kecks

Gemini North

And at other places: MMT, VLT, LBT, Gemini South

Page 47
 The Keck Telescope

Adaptive
optics
lives here

Page 48
Neptune in infra-red light (1.65 microns)

With Keck
Without adaptive optics adaptive optics

2.3 arc sec

May 24, 1999 June 27, 1999

Page 50
Neptune at 1.6 m: Keck AO exceeds
resolution of Hubble Space Telescope

HST - NICMOS Keck AO

~2 arc sec
2.4 meter telescope 10 meter telescope

(Two different dates and times)

Page 51
Uranus with Hubble Space
Telescope and Keck AO

L. Sromovsky

HST, Visible Keck AO, IR

Lesson:
Lesson: Keck
Keck in
in near
near IR
IR has
has same
same resolution
resolution as
as Hubble
Hubble in
in visible
visible

Page 52
European Southern Observatory:
4 8-m Telescopes in Chile

Page 54
 VLT NAOS AO first light

Cluster NGC 3603: IR AO on 8m ground-based telescope

achieves same resolution as HST at 1/3 the wavelength

Hubble Space Telescope NAOS AO on VLT

WFPC2,  = 800 nm  = 2.3 microns Page 55
Frontiers in AO technology

• New kinds of deformable mirrors with > 5000

degree of freedom

• Wavefront sensors that can deal with this many

degrees of freedom

• Innovative control algorithms

• “Tomographic wavefront reconstuction” using

multiple laser guide stars

• New approaches to doing visible-light AO

Page 57
Thank You!

Page 59
RADHA GOBINDA CHANDRA ASTRONOMICAL
OBSERVATORY,
KALYANI GOVT. ENGG. COLLEGE