Characteristics of ground-based adaptive telescope determined by the atmospheric turbulence

摘要

Abstract: The problem of compensation for atmospheric distortions of a wave front has been studied sufficiently long. The first papers on this subject were published in the mid-1960s. At that time, however, the engineering base gave no way for designing efficient devices for compensating for atmospheric distortions. In recent years much progress has been reached in developing wave front distortion meters and correctors and then fitting the optical facilities operating under atmospheric distortions with these devices. In recent years in some countries (USA, France, Germany, England, Australia) the stellar optical interferometers with large measuring bases have been developed and designed. One of the first stellar interferometers, using new technologies, is the Mark II stellar interferometer with the measuring base of 3.1 m. The developed Mark III stellar interferometer is a modern type of the interferometers with a measuring base of 12 m oriented to the north-south. The creation of these stellar optical interferometers has become possible due to the use of new optical technologies, namely, laser systems for supporting the constancy of the optical base of the interferometer as well as for adopting the elements and systems of adaptive optics to remote the noise effects. In parallel with these optical antenna arrays the large aperture telescopes-interferometers are designed. For example, at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii the Keck II telescope is constructed which operated in pair with the Keck telescope (the diameter of the primary mirror is 10 m) will form the optical interferometer with the base of 85 m. European Southern Observatory is conducting the building operations (in Chile at the Serra Paranal Observatory) for design of the 'very large telescope-interferometer' (VLTI), consisting of four telescopes with the aperture 8.2 m. In this interferometer the maximum distance between the interfering optical beams (maximum base) is 128 m. First of all, it should be noted that these novel optical instruments will make it possible to conduct observations of stellar objects with the angular resolution better than 10$+$MIN@9$/. These unique instruments, operating through the atmosphere, will give information of great importance, concerning the structure of the atmosphere of different parts of the world. In turn, these instruments should provide reliable data on the state of the atmosphere. !29