127 research outputs found
Laser Tomography Adaptive Optics (LTAO): A performance study
We present an analytical derivation of the on-axis performance of Adaptive
Optics systems using a given number of guide stars of arbitrary altitude,
distributed at arbitrary angular positions in the sky. The expressions of the
residual error are given for cases of both continuous and discrete turbulent
atmospheric profiles. Assuming Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing with circular
apertures, we demonstrate that the error is formally described by integrals of
products of three Bessel functions. We compare the performance of Adaptive
Optics correction when using natural, Sodium or Rayleigh laser guide stars. For
small diameter class telescopes (~5m), we show that a few number of Rayleigh
beacons can provide similar performance to that of a single Sodium laser, for a
lower overall cost of the instrument. For bigger apertures, using Rayleigh
stars may not be such a suitable alternative because of the too severe cone
effect that drastically degrades the quality of the correction.Comment: accepted for publication in JOS
An Imaging Polarimeter(IMPOL) for multi-wavelength observations
Taking advantage of the advances in array detector technology, an imaging
polarimeter (IMPOL) has been constructed for measuring linear polarization in
the wavelength band from 400-800 nm. It makes use of a Wollaston prism as the
analyser to measure simultaneously the two orthogonal polarization components
that define a Stoke's parameter. An achromatic half-wave plate is used to
rotate the plane of polarization with respect to the axis of the analyser so
that the second Stoke's parameter also can be determined. With a field of view
correponding to about 30x30 sq. mm for a 1.2 m, f/13 telescope, a sensitive,
liquid-nitrogen cooled CCD camera as the detector and a built-in acquisition
and guidance unit, the instrument can be used for studying stellar fields or
extended objects with an angular resolution close to 2 arcsec. The instrumental
polarization is less than 0.05% and the accuracies of measurement are primarily
limited by photon noise for typical observations.Comment: 10 pages including 5 embedded figures; submitted to Astronomy and
Astrophysics Supplement Series; available on request to A. N. Ramaprakash
([email protected] or [email protected]); quote report n
Development of a scalable generic platform for adaptive optics real time control
The main objective of the present project is to explore the viability of an
adaptive optics control system based exclusively on Field Programmable Gate
Arrays (FPGAs), making strong use of their parallel processing capability. In
an Adaptive Optics (AO) system, the generation of the Deformable Mirror (DM)
control voltages from the Wavefront Sensor (WFS) measurements is usually
through the multiplication of the wavefront slopes with a predetermined
reconstructor matrix. The ability to access several hundred hard multipliers
and memories concurrently in an FPGA allows performance far beyond that of a
modern CPU or GPU for tasks with a well defined structure such as Adaptive
Optics control. The target of the current project is to generate a signal for a
real time wavefront correction, from the signals coming from a Wavefront
Sensor, wherein the system would be flexible to accommodate all the current
Wavefront Sensing techniques and also the different methods which are used for
wavefront compensation. The system should also accommodate for different data
transmission protocols (like Ethernet, USB, IEEE 1394 etc.) for transmitting
data to and from the FPGA device, thus providing a more flexible platform for
Adaptive Optics control. Preliminary simulation results for the formulation of
the platform, and a design of a fully scalable slope computer is presented.Comment: Paper presented as part of SPIE ICOP 2015 Conference Proceeding
A Study of starless dark cloud LDN 1570: Distance, Dust properties and Magnetic field geometry
We wish to map the magnetic field geometry and to study the dust properties
of the starless cloud, L1570, using multi-wavelength optical polarimetry and
photometry of the stars projected on the cloud. We made R-band imaging
polarimetry of the stars projected on a cloud, L1570, to trace the magnetic
field orientation. We also made multi-wavelength polarimetric and photometric
observations to constrain the properties of dust in L1570. We estimated a
distance of 394 +/- 70 pc to the cloud using 2MASS JHKs colours. Using the
values of the Serkowski parameters namely , ,
{\lambda}max and the position of the stars on near infrared color-color
diagram, we identified 13 stars that could possibly have intrinsic polarization
and/or rotation in their polarization angles. One star, 2MASS
J06075075+1934177, which is a B4Ve spectral type, show the presence of diffuse
interstellar bands in the spectrum apart from showing H{\alpha} line in
emission. There is an indication for the presence of slightly bigger dust
grains towards L1570 on the basis of the dust grain size-indicators such as
{\lambda}max and Rv values. The magnetic field lines are found to be parallel
to the cloud structures seen in the 250{\mu}m images (also in 8{\mu}m and
12{\mu}m shadow images) of L1570. Based on the magnetic field geometry, the
cloud structure and the complex velocity structure, we believe that L1570 is in
the process of formation due to the converging flow material mediated by the
magnetic field lines. Structure function analysis showed that in the L1570
cloud region the large scale magnetic fields are stronger when compared with
the turbulent component of magnetic fields. The estimated magnetic field
strengths suggest that the L1570 cloud region is sub-critical and hence could
be strongly supported by the magnetic field lines.Comment: 26 pages, 22 figures, and 7 tables; Accepted for its publication in
A&
Gaussian phase autocorrelation as an accurate compensator for FFT-based atmospheric phase screen simulations
Accurately simulating the atmospheric turbulence behaviour is always challenging. The well-known FFT based method falls short in correctly predicting both the low and high frequency behaviours. Sub-harmonic compensation aids in low-frequency correction but does not solve the problem for all screen size to outer scale parameter ratios (G/Lâ‚€). FFT-based simulation gives accurate result only for relatively large screen size to outer scale parameter ratio (G/Lâ‚€). In this work, we have introduced a Gaussian phase autocorrelation matrix to compensate for any sort of residual errors after applying for a modified subharmonics compensation. With this, we have solved problems such as under sampling at the high-frequency range, unequal sampling/weights for subharmonics addition at low-frequency range and the patch normalization factor. Our approach reduces the maximum error in phase structure-function in the simulation with respect to theoretical prediction to within 1.8%, G/Lâ‚€ = 1/1000
Eliminating artefacts in polarimetric images using deep learning
Polarization measurements done using Imaging Polarimeters such as the Robotic Polarimeter are very sensitive to the presence of artefacts in images. Artefacts can range from internal reflections in a telescope to satellite trails that could contaminate an area of interest in the image. With the advent of wide-field polarimetry surveys, it is imperative to develop methods that automatically flag artefacts in images. In this paper, we implement a Convolutional Neural Network to identify the most dominant artefacts in the images. We find that our model can successfully classify sources with 98 per cent true positive and 97 per cent true negative rates. Such models, combined with transfer learning, will give us a running start in artefact elimination for near-future surveys like WALOP
UNICS - An Unified Instrument Control System for Small/Medium Sized Astronomical Observatories
Although the astronomy community is witnessing an era of large telescopes,
smaller and medium sized telescopes still maintain their utility being larger
in numbers. In order to obtain better scientific outputs it is necessary to
incorporate modern and advanced technologies to the back-end instruments and to
their interfaces with the telescopes through various control processes. However
often tight financial constraints on the smaller and medium size observatories
limit the scope and utility of these systems. Most of the time for every new
development on the telescope the back-end control systems are required to be
built from scratch leading to high costs and efforts. Therefore a simple, low
cost control system for small and medium size observatory needs to be developed
to minimize the cost and efforts while going for the expansion of the
observatory. Here we report on the development of a modern, multipurpose
instrument control system UNICS (Unified Instrument Control System) to
integrate the controls of various instruments and devices mounted on the
telescope. UNICS consists of an embedded hardware unit called Common Control
Unit (CCU) and Linux based data acquisition and User Interface. The Hardware of
the CCU is built around the Atmel make ATmega 128 micro-controller and is
designed with a back-plane, Master Slave architecture. The Graphical User
Interface (GUI) has been developed based on QT and the back end application
software is based on C/C++. UNICS provides feedback mechanisms which give the
operator a good visibility and a quick-look display of the status and modes of
instruments. UNICS is being used for regular science observations since March
2008 on 2m, f/10 IUCAA Telescope located at Girawali, Pune India.Comment: Submitted to PASP, 10 Pages, 5 figure
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