Schematic illustration of an adaptive optics (AO) system. Light is shown with dotted lines, control connections with dashed lines.
The wavefront enters the AO system at the top. The light first hits a tip–tilt (TT) mirror and is then directed to a deformable mirror (DM). The wavefront is corrected and part of the light is tapped off by a beamsplitter (BS). The residual errors (due to system latency, finite number of actuators/sensors etc.) are measured by a wavefront sensor (Shack-Hartmann in this case) and the control hardware then sends updated signals to the DM and the TT mirror. The two filterwheels (FW1 and FW2) are used during calibration only.
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