Abstract

It is well known that the image forming ability of an astronomical optic system is limited by distortions due to a turbulent atmosphere¹. A large aperture telescope will have no more resolving power than one with a diameter equal to Fried’s r_O parameter which is usually between 5 and 10 centimeters. Recently, technological development in the areas of wave-front sensing and deformable mirrors have lead to adaptive optic systems. These systems attempt to measure the atmosphere induced wave-front distortion and cancel it through the use of a deformable mirror. Due to the short correlation time of the atmosphere, they require a high bandwidth multi-input multi-output control system.

© 1995 Optical Society of America