Application of wavelength diversity for astronomical adaptive optics imaging

Abstract

Wavelength diversity uses multi-wavelength data to simultaneously estimate the point spread function (PSF) of an imaging system and the astronomical object of interest e.g. a binary star with a faint companion. The algorithm presented does not recover the PSFs directly but estimates the Zernike coefficients of the residual wavefront phase aberration in the pupil of the telescope. For dual, and triple, channel point source imaging, the common wavefront is estimated and the residuals between the measured and estimated PSFs correspond to non common path aberrations in each of the imaging paths. © 2010 SPIE.