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Design of the chrisp adaptive optics system

University of British Columbia

Adaptive optics increases the angular resolution of large, ground-based telescopes by compensating for the effects of atmospheric turbulence. CHRISP is a prototype adaptive optics system based on curvature sensing I have designed and built for the DAO 1.2 meter telescope. To simplify the optical design, the CHRISP wavefront sensor detects curvature deviations in a single defocused image. The prototype wavefront sensor uses a low noise frame transfer 64x64 CCD with a custom DSP56002 controller. Low order wavefront correction (including tip-tilt) is provided by a deformable membrane mirror with a few dozen electrostatically driven actuators. The control system maps sensor zones to the corresponding mirror actuators. Ultimately, I expect to use CHRISP to study faint companions to nearby stars, using the primary as a natural guide star. The details of many binary systems are hidden, since the secondary spectrum is hard to detect against the glare from the primary star. Improving the image sharpness and diverting the primary light should greatly enhance the contrast of the faint companion. The CHRISP prototype is a testbed for the single image curvature sensing technique, and for the prototype wavefront sensor and membrane mirror.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-04-16

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7273

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace