High resolution imaging system for Udaipur Solar Observatory

Abstract

A Multi-Application Solar Telescope (MAST) is proposed to be installed at the Udaipur Solar Observatory (USO) in India to monitor the Sun in optical and near infra-red wavelengths. The median value of the Fried's parameter at this site is 4 cm. USO is in the process of building an Adaptive optics (AO) system in order to have diffraction limited performance of the MAST under this moderate seeing condition. AO helps in achieving high-resolution imaging by compensating the atmospheric turbulence in real-time. We have performed simulations to evaluate the performance of AO for various seeing conditions. It was concluded that with the present availability of AO system components, a 55 cm aperture telescope would yield optimum performance with AO, in combination with post-processing techniques like speckle imaging and phase diversity. At present, we are developing a proto-type AO system at USO to demonstrate its performance with a 15 cm Coude´ refracting telescope as a preparation for the main AO system to be deployed on the MAST. The prototype AO system is being realized in two phases. In the first phase, we have developed an image stabilization system to compensate the global tilt of the wave-front. The second phase consists of sensing and correcting the local tilts of the wave-front by integrating a micro-machined membrane deformable mirror with the image stabilization system and is currently in progress. Here, we present the details of our proto-type AO system. We also present preliminary results obtained from simulations using Phase Diversity as a post processing technique.