Abstract
Adaptive optics (AO) has become an indispensable tool at ground-based solar telescopes. AO enables the ground-based observer to overcome the adverse effects of atmospheric seeing and obtain diffraction limited observations. Over the last decade adaptive optics systems have been deployed at major ground-based solar telescopes and revitalized ground-based solar astronomy. The relatively small aperture of solar telescopes and the bright source make solar AO possible for visible wavelengths where the majority of solar observations are still performed. Solar AO systems enable diffraction limited observations of the Sun for a significant fraction of the available observing time at ground-based solar telescopes, which often have a larger aperture than equivalent space based observatories, such as HINODE. New ground breaking scientific results have been achieved with solar adaptive optics and this trend continues. New large aperture telescopes are currently being deployed or are under construction. With the aid of solar AO these telescopes will obtain observations of the highly structured and dynamic solar atmosphere with unprecedented resolution. This paper reviews solar adaptive optics techniques and summarizes the recent progress in the field of solar adaptive optics. An outlook to future solar AO developments, including a discussion of Multi-Conjugate AO (MCAO) and Ground-Layer AO (GLAO) will be given.Electronic Supplementary MaterialSupplementary material is available for this article at 10.12942/lrsp-2011-2.
Highlights
Driven by the quest for ever higher spatial resolution observations of the Sun, the development of solar adaptive optics has excelled tremendously during the last 5 – 10 years
In the extreme case of a very large wavefront sensor (WFS) FOV a ground-layer Adaptive optics (AO) is realized, i.e., the upper atmospheric turbulence is not corrected at all. This effect is more pronounced at high zenith angles and worse high altitude seeing due to the geometric projection of the turbulent phase screens
In addition to the high airmass solar AO faces this additional disadvantage in achieving high Strehl in the early morning hours
Summary
Driven by the quest for ever higher spatial resolution observations of the Sun, the development of solar adaptive optics has excelled tremendously during the last 5 – 10 years. Several solar AO systems have been deployed at major ground-based solar telescopes and are routinely operated. These AO systems have facilitated observations of structure in the solar atmosphere at a resolution that is at or near the diffraction limit of those telescopes. It is worthwhile to briefly summarize the main scientific drivers for observations of the Sun at the highest possible resolution and motivate the need for solar adaptive optics. Understanding the physics of the small scale structure observed on the Sun in many cases is crucial to understanding important scientific questions such as:
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