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• Main Authors: J. S. Lawrence, M. C. B. Ashley, J. W. V. Storey, T. Travouillon
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.185.2892; http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/%7Emcba/pubs/law08c.pdf

ABSTRACT. The unique atmospheric characteristics found at Dome C on the Antarctic plateau offer significant advantages for the operation of adaptive optics systems. An analysis is presented here comparing the performance of adaptive optics systems on telescopes located at Dome C with similar systems located at a mid-latitude site. The large coherence length, wide isoplanatic angle, and long coherence time of the Dome C atmosphere allow an adaptive optics system located there to correct to high order, observe over wide fields and use faint guide stars, resulting in a lower total wavefront error and a significant increase in sky coverage factor than can be achieved at a typical mid-latitude site. While the same performance could in principle be achievable at mid-latitude sites, this would only occur under exceptionally stable atmospheric conditions that are likely to occur on only a few nights per year. 1.