The wavefront correction system for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope

An important part of a large solar telescope is the ability to correct, in real time, optical alignment errors caused by gravitational bending of the telescope structure and wavefront errors caused by atmospheric seeing. The National Solar Observatory is currently designing the 4 meter Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST). The ATST wavefront correction system, described in this paper, will incorporate a number of interacting wavefront control systems to provide diffraction limited imaging performance. We will describe these systems and summarize the interaction between the various sub-systems and present results of performance modeling.

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