The optical modeling of large segmented telescopes presents an interesting technical challenge. Up to now the approach to the problem has been based upon Fourier optics. Analytic work and numerical simulations have been presented in referenced papers. So far as the author is aware, all numerical methods presented to date center upon an FFT on a planar phae mask that represents a perfectly regular segmented pupil. An alternaive approah based upon physcal optic has been investigated at the UK Astronomy Technology Center. The segmentation of the telescope primary mirror makes the physical optics computation an ideal candidate for distributed computing. This poster describes the program of work that has been followed to date.

Date Published: 7 July 2004
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 5382, Second Backaskog Workshop on Extremely Large Telescopes, (7 July 2004);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5382:
Second Backaskog Workshop on Extremely Large Telescopes
Arne L. Ardeberg; Torben Andersen, Editor(s)