A Tip-Tilt Mirror Control System for Partial Image Correction at UC Mount John Observatory

Abstract

Astronomical images captured by ground-based telescopes, including at University of Canterbury Mount John Observatory, are distorted due to atmospheric turbulence. The major constituents of atmospheric distortion are tip-tilt aberrations. The solution to achieve higher resolution is to develop and install a tip-tilt mirror control system on ground-based telescopes. A realtime tip-tilt mirror control system measures and corrects for tip-tilt aberrations in optical wavefronts. It effectively minimises the perturbation of the star image when observing with the aid of a telescope. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first tip-tilt mirror control system to be applied at a New Zealand astronomical observatory. This would extend the possibilities of correcting higher-order aberrations for 0.5 to 1.0 metre class, ground-based telescopes.