A wavefront reconstructor and control computer for the University of Chicago adaptive optics system and the corrected field-of-view of an adaptive optics system and two methods to increase it

A design and implementation of a wavefront reconstructor and control system for the University of Chicago adaptive optics system is presented along with the necessary computation requirements and algorithms. The use of wavefront information obtained by the wavefront sensor and reconstructor is shown to be useful in measuring the performance of the adaptive optics system and diagnosing sources of error. Calibration procedures for the data are given along with the algorithms used to quantify the residual errors. In addition, the spatial and temporal characteristics of the telescope and site can be derived from the recorded data.; The isoplanatic angle of the adaptive optics correction is thought to provide a severe limitation on the usefulness of an adaptive optics system. I show that under good seeing conditions the useful field of view is an order of magnitude larger than the field predicted by the classical isoplanatic angle. The corrected field of view is experimentally shown to increase even further using spatially degraded wavefront corrections. The optimal spatial order of the correction is shown to depend strongly on the wavelength of the observation and the altitude of the dominant turbulent layers.