Effect of anisotropic imaging in off-axis adaptive astronomical systems

Abstract

Effect of anisotropic imaging arising due to the off-axis adaptive correction is considered. The main manifestation of this effect is that the isophotes of the image of a star separated by some angular distance from the guide one have a non-circular form. It is shown that the effect of interest depends strongly on the observation conditions, and under certain conditions the image width in direction towards the guide star can be up to two times wider than in the transversal one. The results obtained can be used in practice for the reconstruction or calibration of images obtained after the off-axis adaptive correction.