Development of image motion compensation system for 1.3 m telescope at Vainu Bappu Observatory

We developed a tip-tilt system to compensate the turbulence induced image motion for 1.3 m telescope at Vainu Bappu Observatory, Kavalur. The instrument is designed to operate at visible wavelength band (480-700 nm) with a field of view \(1^{\prime}\times1^{\prime}\). The tilt corrected images have...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2019-08
Main Authors: Reddy, Sreekanth, Banyal, Ravinder Kumar, Sridharan, R, Kamath, P U, Selvaraj, Aishwarya
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atmospheric turbulence
Control equipment
Field of view
Image motion compensation
Image quality
Image resolution
Motion compensation
Observatories
Sky
Telescopes
Tip tilt
Wave fronts
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Summary:We developed a tip-tilt system to compensate the turbulence induced image motion for 1.3 m telescope at Vainu Bappu Observatory, Kavalur. The instrument is designed to operate at visible wavelength band (480-700 nm) with a field of view \(1^{\prime}\times1^{\prime}\). The tilt corrected images have shown up to \(\approx\) 57% improvement in image resolution and a corresponding peak intensity increase by a factor of \(\approx\) 2.8. A closed-loop correction bandwidth of \(\approx\) 26 Hz has been achieved with on-sky tests and the root mean square motion of the star image has been reduced by a factor of \(\sim\) 14. These results are consistent with theoretical and numerical predictions of wave-front aberrations caused by atmospheric turbulence and image quality improvement expected from a real-time control system. In this paper, we present the details of the instrument design, laboratory calibration studies and quantify its performance on the telescope.
ISSN:2331-8422