Filtration of atmospheric noise in narrow-field astrometry with very large telescopes

Main Astronomical Observatory, National Academy of Sciencies of the Ukraine, Zabolotnogo 27, 03680 Kyiv-127, Ukraine e-mail: laz@mao.kiev.ua

Received: 17 June 2004
Accepted: 19 July 2004

Abstract

This paper presents a non-classic approach to narrow field astrometry that offers a significant improvement over conventional techniques due to enhanced reduction of atmospheric image motion. The method is based on two key elements: apodization of the entrance pupil and the enhanced virtual symmetry of reference stars. Symmetrization is implemented by setting special weights to each reference star. Thus a reference field itself forms a virtual net filter that effectively attenuates the image motion spectrum. Atmospheric positional error was found to follow a power dependency on angular field size R and aperture D; here k is some optional even integer limited by a number N of reference stars, and is a term dependent on k and the magnitude and sky star distribution in the field. As compared to conventional techniques for which , the improvement in accuracy increases by some orders. Limitations to astrometric performance of monopupil large ground-based telescopes are estimated. The total atmospheric and photon noise for at a 10 m telescope at good  seeing was found to be, depending on sky star density, 10 to 60 μas per 10 min exposure in R band. For a 100 m telescope and FWHM =  (low-order adaptive optics corrections) the potential accuracy is 0.2 to 2 μas.