The unique Antarctic atmosphere: implications for adaptive optics

Abstract. The turbulence structure of the atmosphere is the primary limitation to adaptive optics system performance on extremely large telescopes — driving current world-wide site testing campaigns. The potential for adaptive optics correction on extremely large telescopes located at Dome C station...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jon S. Lawrence, Michael C. B. Ashley, Michael G. Burton, James P, John W. V. Storey
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.539.5538
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jl/cv/C03_Garching_AO.pdf
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Summary:Abstract. The turbulence structure of the atmosphere is the primary limitation to adaptive optics system performance on extremely large telescopes — driving current world-wide site testing campaigns. The potential for adaptive optics correction on extremely large telescopes located at Dome C station on the Antarctic plateau is in-vestigated here. Due to the unique atmospheric characteristics of this site it is found that a natural guide star adaptive optics system with a single deformable mirror should outperform a multi-conjugate multi-laser guide star system at a mid-latitude site. 1