M. G. Löfdahl, G. B. Scharmer
Recently measured straylight PSFs in Hinode/SOT make granulation contrast in
observed data and synthetic MHD data consistent. Data from earthbound
telescopes also need accurate correction for straylight and fixed optical
aberrations. We aim to develop a method for measuring straylight in the
post-focus imaging optics of the SST. We removed any influence from atmospheric
turbulence and scattering by using an artificial target. We measured integrated
straylight from three different sources in the same data: ghost images caused
by reflections in the near-detector optics, PSFs corresponding to wavefront
aberrations in the optics by using phase diversity, and extended scattering PSF
wings of unknown origin by fitting to a number of different kernels. We
performed the analysis separately in the red and blue beams. Wavefront
aberrations, which possibly originate in the bimorph mirror of the adaptive
optics, are responsible for a wavelength-dependent straylight of 20-30% of the
intensity in the form of PSFs with 90% of the energy contained within a radius
of 0.6". There are ghost images that contribute at the most a few % of
straylight. The fraction of other sources of scattered light from the
post-focus instrumentation of the SST is only \sim10^-3 of the recorded
intensity. This contribution has wide wings with FWHM \sim16" in the blue and
\sim34" in the red. The present method seems to work well for separately
estimating wavefront aberrations and the scattering kernel shape and fraction.
Ghost images can be expected at the same level for solar observations. The
high-order wavefront aberrations possibly caused by the AO bimorph mirror
dominate the measured straylight but are likely to change when imaging the Sun.
We can therefore make no firm statements about the origin of straylight in SST
data, but strongly suspect wavefront aberrations to be the dominant source.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.2663
No comments:
Post a Comment