Adaptive Optics at the McMath-Pierce

The tremendous improvement of image quality from adaptive optics is illustrated by 100 simultaneous short-exposure images of a small sunspot at 1000nm and the corresponding wavefront sensor data. The left image corresponds to the average of all 100 images; the center image represents the average after correcting for image motion (which simulates the effect of a correlation tracker); and on the right is the deconvolved image assuming an adaptive mirror that corrects the first 54 Zernike components of the measured wavefront aberration. See the article in the NOAO September 2000 newsletter.