One of the key-point for the future developments of the multiconjugate adaptive optics for the astronomy is the availability of the correction for a large fraction of the sky. The sky coverage represents one of the limits of the existing single reference adaptive optics system. Multiconjugate adaptive optics allows to overcome the limitations due to the small corrected field of view and the Layer Oriented approach, in particular by its Multiple Field of View version, increases the number of possible references using also very faint stars to guide the adaptive systems. In this paper we study the sky coverage problem in the Layer Oriented case, using both numerical and analytical approaches. Taking into account a star catalogue and a star luminosity distribution function we run a lot of numerical simulation sequences using the Layer Oriented Simulation Tool (LOST). Moreover we perform for several cases a detailed optimization procedure and a relative full simulation in order to achieve better performance for the considered system in those particular conditions. In this way we can retrieve a distribution of numerically simulated cases that allows computing the sky coverage with respect to a performance parameter as the Strehl Ratio and to the scientific field size.

Date Published: 25 October 2004
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 5490, Advancements in Adaptive Optics, (25 October 2004); doi: 10.1117/12.551839

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5490:
Advancements in Adaptive Optics
Domenico Bonaccini Calia; Brent L. Ellerbroek; Roberto Ragazzoni, Editor(s)