AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 26 LSST
Poster, Monday, 9:20am-7:00pm, January 9, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[26.25] Studies of Atmospheric Distortion of Optical Wavefronts with the SOAR Shack-Hartmann WFS

L. Simms, D. Burke (SLAC), C.F. Claver (NOAO), S. Heathcote (SOAR, NOAO), L. Rosenberg, S. Asztalos (LLNL), A. Becker (U. Washington), M. Britton, B. Ellerbroek (Caltech), K. Gilmore (SLAC), M.-C. Hainaut-Rouelle (Gemini), G. Jernigan (SSL, UCB), S.M. Kahn (SLAC), V. Krabbendam (NOAO), V. Margoniner (UC Davis), D. Monet (USNO), J. Peterson (SLAC), P. Pinto (U. Arizona), P. Puxley (Gemini), A. Rasmussen (SLAC), J. Sebag, A. Tokovinin (NOAO), J.A. Tyson, D. Wittman (UC Davis)

The Shack-Hartmann Calibration Wave Front Sensor (CWFS) of the SOAR telescope at Cerro Pachon, Chile has been used to study spatial correlations of wavefront distortions created by atmospheric turbulence. The SOAR CWFS samples the 4.2 meter diameter telescope aperture with a lenslett spacing of 17 cm imaged in the pupil plane; exposures of 0.03 seconds duration were taken every 7 seconds during observing periods of approximately two hours on each of three successive nights in May of 2005. Time-stamped data from the Cerro Pachon MASS-DIMM instrument and the SOAR weather monitors were acquired during the same periods. Spatial correlations of distortions in the observed optical wavefronts were computed for spatial wavelengths ranging from 17 cm to 4 meters; the measurements are compared with simulations that take into account the observed atmospheric conditions.


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