High resolution visible imaging on the vlt

Abstract

A new approach to achieving diffraction limited imaging in the visible from ground-based telescopes is described. It uses lucky image selection to choose the sharpest images from a sequence taken at high speed. When used behind a low order adaptive optics system it is possible to work with much larger diameter telescopes than would normally be expected. A further development involving aperture segmentation and image re-synthesis promises to allow these techniques to be extended to even larger telescopes.