MRI: Development of Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics for the 1.6 Meter Solar Telescope in Big Bear

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Earth's atmosphere is turbulent and as light passes through it the resulting images become distorted. Solar astronomers who study the sun, our local star, use the techniques of Adaptive Optics (AO) to correct for these distortions. To do this they analyze the distortions of a small patch of sunlight very close to the region being studied. The corrections necessary to remove the distortions are then made by passing the telescope's incoming light through special deformable mirrors. This works very well when the region of the sun they want to study is small. However, sunspots and other interesting phenomena on the sun are large enough that such techniques will only deliver an undistorted image of a small part of the region of interest. More sophisticated techniques, called Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) have been developed to increase the distortion-free field of view. Newer, and larger, solar telescopes are capable of delivering sharper images than their smaller counterparts. But in order to take advantage of this the atmospheric distortion corrections must be improved even further. Dr. Philip Goode of the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Director of the Big Bear Solar Observatory in Big Bear Lake, California, leads a team that is developing an enhanced MCAO system that will deliver exquisite images of a much larger area of the sun using the new 1.6-meter New Solar Telescope there. This new system will provide scientists with a much clearer picture of the physical processes that give rise to "space weather" that originates in the sun and affects earth's climate and environment. Dr. Goode's project is funded by NSF's Major Research Instrumentation program through the NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences.