Radio plasma fringes as guide stars: Tracking the global tilt

¹ Department of Physics, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel
² Astrophysical Observatory of Arcetri, Largo Enrico Fermi 5, 50125 Florence, Italy e-mail: ragazzoni@arcetri.astro.it
³ Max Planck Institute für Astronomie, Konigstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
⁴ SI Vavilov State Optical Institute, 12 Birzhevaya liniya, St Petersburg, 199034, Russia e-mail: vadim@optilas.spb.ru

Corresponding author: E. Ribak, eribak@physics.technion.ac.il

Received: 11 June 2001
Accepted: 7 July 2003

Abstract

We present a novel technique to alleviate the problem of the global tilt in artificial guide stars for adaptive optics. This technique is based on the registration of trails of radio-excited plasma spots caused by the atmospheric tilt. Following the time trace of the trails one can find and measure the tilt produced by atmospheric turbulent layers. Different methods were applied to estimate the extent of the trails. We describe results of computer simulations, showing the performance of the proposed approach.