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Session 42 - Ground-Based Optical Telescopes & Instruments.
Display session, Tuesday, January 14
Metropolitan Ballroom,
Image selection, adaptive optics and post-facto image restoration methods are all techniques being used for diffraction limited imaging with ground-based solar and stellar telescopes. Often these techniques are used in a hybrid form like e.g. the application of adaptive optics and/or post-facto image restoration in combination with already good images obtained by image selection in periods of good seeing. Fried (JOSA 56, 1372, 1966), Hecquet and Coupinot (J. Optics/Paris 16, 21, 1985) and Beckers ("Solar and Stellar Granulation", Kluwer, Rutten amp; Severino Eds, 55, 1988) already discussed the usefulness of image selection, or the "Lucky Observer" mode, for high resolution imaging. All assumed perfect telescope optics. In case of moderate telescope aberrations image selection can still lead to diffraction limited imaging but only when the atmospheric wavefront aberration happens to compensate that of the telescope. In this "Very Lucky Observer" mode the probability of obtaining a good image is reduced over the un-aberrated case, as are the size of the isoplanatic patch and the exposure time. We describe an analysis of these effects for varying telescope aberrations. These result in a strong case for the removal of telescope aberrations either by initial implementation or by the use of slow active optics.
