Download or read book A Practical Comparison of Phase Diversity to Interferometry in Measuring the Aberrations in an Adaptive Optics System written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Any adaptive optics system must be calibrated with respect to internal aberrations in order for it to properly correct the starlight before it enters the science camera. Typical internal calibration consists of using a point source stimulus at the input to the AO system and recording the wavefront at the output. Two methods for such calibration have been implemented on the adaptive optics system at Lick Observatory. The first technique, Phase Diversity, consists of taking out of focus images with the science camera and using an iterative algorithm to estimate the system wavefront. A second technique uses a newly installed instrument, the Phase-Shifting Diffraction Interferometer, which has the promise of providing very high accuracy wavefront measurements. During observing campaigns in 1998, both of these methods were used for initial calibrations. In this paper we present results and compare the two methods in regard to accuracy and their practical aspects.