We have developed a portable solar and stellar adaptive optics (PSSAO) system, which is optimized for solar and stellar high-resolution imaging in the near infrared wavelength range. Our PSSAO features compact physical size, low cost and high performance. The AO software is based on LabVIEW programing and the mechanical and optical components are based on off-the-shelf commercial components, which make a high quality, duplicable and rapid developed AO system possible. In addition, our AO software is flexible, and can be used with different telescopes with or without central obstruction. We discuss our portable AO design philosophy, and present our recent on-site observation results. According to our knowledge, this is the first portable adaptive optics in the world that is able to work for solar and stellar high-resolution imaging with good performances.
We propose a polarimetry imaging subtraction test system that can be used for the direct imaging of the reflected light
from exoplanets. Such a system will be able to remove the speckle noise scattered by the wave-front error and thus can
enhance the high-contrast imaging. In this system, we use a Wollaston Prism (WP) to divide the incoming light into two
simultaneous images with perpendicular linear polarizations. One of the images is used as the reference image. Then
both the phase and geometric distortion corrections have been performed on the other image. The corrected image is
subtracted with the reference image to remove the speckles. The whole procedure is based on an optimization algorithm
and the target function is to minimize the residual speckles after subtraction. For demonstration purpose, here we only
use a circular pupil in the test without integrating of our apodized-pupil coronagraph. It is shown that best result can be
gained by inducing both phase and distortion corrections. Finally, it has reached an extra contrast gain of 50-times
improvement in average, which is promising to be used for the direct imaging of exoplanets.
We propose a dual-beam polarimetry differential imaging test system that can be used for the direct imaging of the
exoplanets. The system is composed of a liquid crystal variable retarder (LCVR) in the pupil to switch between two
orthogonal polarized states, and a Wollaston prism (WP) that will be inserted before the final focal focus of the system to
create two polarized images for the differential subtraction. Such a system can work separately or be integrated in the
coronagraph system to enhance the high-contrast imaging. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system, here
we show the initial test result both with and without integrating our developed coronagraph. A unique feature for this
system is that each channel can subtract with itself by using the retarder to rotate the planet's polarization orientation,
which has the best performance according to our lab test results. Finally, it is shown that the polarimetry differential
imaging system is a promising technique and can be used for the direct imaging observation of reflected lights from the
exoplanets.
The portable solar adaptive optics is a compact adaptive optics system that will be the first visitor solar instrument in the
world. As so, it will be able to work with any solar telescope with a aperture size up to ~ 2.0 meters, which will cover the
largest solar telescope currently operational. The portable AO features small physical size, high-flexibility and high-performance,
and is a duplicable and affordable system. It will provide wave-front correction down to the 0.5-μm
wavelength, and will be used for solar high-resolution imaging in the near infrared and the visible. It will be the first AO
system that uses LabVIEW based high quality parallel and block-diagram programming, which fully takes advantage of
today's multi-core CPUs, and makes a rapid development of an AO system possible. In this publication, we report our
recent progress on the portable adaptive optics, which includes the laboratory test for performance characterization, and
initial on-site scientific observations.
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