Stuart Jefferies, Georgia State University, Michael Hart, University of Arizona, Douglas Hope, US Air Force Academy, Neil Murphy, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Keywords: daytime adaptive optics, magneto-optical filter
Abstract:
Current high-resolution ground-based optical observations of resident space objects are largely limited to night-time because of the difficulty of seeing objects against the daylight sky. Atmospheric aberration correction becomes very challenging because photon noise from Rayleigh-scattered sunlight obscures the signal from all but the largest and brightest targets. However, the problem can be alleviated, to a large extent, by using a laser guide star (LGS) that is located above the dominant layers of atmospheric turbulence and that can be detected with a good signal-to-noise ratio against a bright sky. In this paper we show that a sodium-LGS viewed through a magneto-optical filter fulfills these requirements. We also provide a formalism that allows tomographic wave-front estimation from a single beacon, and provides a way to mitigate the focus anisoplanatism inherent in the LGS signal due to its finite height in the atmosphere.
Date of Conference: September 20-23, 2016
Track: Adaptive Optics & Imaging