Abstract

The 1.5 m telescope at the Starfire Optical Range, USAF Phillips Laboratory, Albuquerque, NM, USA is equipped with laser beacon adaptive optics and a high speed full aperture tilt correction system. The laser beacon is formed by a copper vapor laser propagated out the full 1.5 m aperture and focused at 14 km range. The laser operates at 5,000 pulses per second, 50 ns per pulse, with approximately 60-70 watts average power into the atmosphere. Light backscattered from the laser beacon between the ranges of 12 and 16 km is sensed by an unintensified, Pockels-cell-gated, silicon-based CCD Shack-Hartmann wave front sensor. The optics are configured such that it is also possible to use natural stars as beacons for the higher-order adaptive optics. Wave front corrections are applied to a 241 actuator continuous facesheet deformable mirror operated at approximately 100 Hz closed loop bandwidth.

© 1995 Optical Society of America