Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
Ok I have a question or two.
If my guiding is now at 0.2 of a pixel on a system that is at 0.78" per pixel, will an AO produce sufficient improvement to warrant the cost?
Now if I have good to great seeing, and my mount can only guide at 0.5hz (post above) will an AO be worth getting?
I get what an AO essentially does, but I just want to clarify things in my mind.
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As I understand it, an AO should help your system in good seeing, because it should reduce local slow turbulence effects (dome/tube) and guide/wind errors. If the seeing is not so good, seeing blur will dominate over wind/guide errors and an AO may be less use (ie it won't fix bad seeing). If you are guiding at 0.16 arc sec (assume RMS), the mount induced FWHM component is about 0.4 arcsec, which is probably just enough to be noticeable in really good seeing.
However, people who regularly use AO indicate that it always helps, so it could be worth it under a wider range of conditions - even 10% improvement in resolution has to be worth having. Cost of these things is relatively small cf the rest of a top end system?