AO-L Adaptive Optics

[KenGee (Kenith Gee)]

Hi can some one who has one of these units tell me how good they work? Do the allow you to stop using corrections on your mount. I have a G11 and with a telescope of 1800m focal length, will this system work well. My measured PE is about 7 arce secs with PEC on. Any insight would be helpful thanks in advance.

[Gama]

The AO will remove all but the most severe mount errors.
It will also remove most star dancing as well, and create very small star points as apposed to normal guiding control.

If you can afford it, get it.

Theo.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

They work very well, mostly.

I have used an A07, it was a real pain, but if your patient and pedantic, you can halve your FWHM.

It corrects for small PE errors, and if they exceed a set amount, a mount correction is issued.

It is difficult to use, you need a bright star for it to operate optimately, the brighter the star, the faster it corrects for atmospherics and mount PE. 20hz or more is very good, 2 seconds or slower gives no advantage (same as mount corrections).

The problem is finding a star bright enough to make it worth it, endless cam rotation to find a star (unless you set Sky up to find one straight up, or, idealy with a auto rotator) can be tiresome, and you will need a set of flats to match each time you change the angle.

If you get 7 arc secs PE now in urban skies at 1800m FL, the improvment maybe marginal, given FWHM could be 4-6 arcsecs to start with.

In your case its gets down to how keen you are, if you are prepared to spend lots of time in setup go for it, but from my experience, megadata can reduce FWHM in a similar fashion without being restricted to objects near a bright star, or a new set of flats everytime you image.

[Peter Ward]

The current AO's ie AO8 and AOL are very mature products and are far more forgiving of tilt errors in the optical train.

True, a brightish guide star (really depends upon aperture) is required to really make them hum.

That said...they easily correct for slow seeing and mount tracking errors.

[KenGee (Kenith Gee)]

Thanks for that. Peter I give you a ring next week to get a price though the Mister of everything has been frowning with my last few deliveries.