The Wave-Front Correction System for the Sunrise Balloon-Borne Solar Observatory

Berkefeld, T.; Schmidt, W.; Soltau, D.; Bell, A.; Doerr, H. P.; Feger, B.; Friedlein, R.; Gerber, K.; Heidecke, F.; Kentischer, T.; v. D. Lühe, O.; Sigwarth, M.; Wälde, E.; Barthol, P.; Deutsch, W.; Gandorfer, A.; Germerott, D.; Grauf, B.; Meller, R.; Álvarez-Herrero, A.; Knölker, M.; Martínez-Pillet, V.; Solanki, S. K.; Title, A. M.
Bibliographical reference

Solar Physics, Volume 268, Issue 1, pp.103-123

Advertised on:
1
2011
Journal
Number of authors
24
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
95
Refereed citations
83
Description
This paper describes the wave-front correction system developed for the Sunrise balloon telescope, and it provides information about its in-flight performance. For the correction of low-order aberrations, a Correlating Wave-Front Sensor (CWS) was used. It consisted of a six-element Shack - Hartmann wave-front sensor (WFS), a fast tip-tilt mirror for the compensation of image motion, and an active telescope secondary mirror for focus correction. The CWS delivered a stabilized image with a precision of 0.04 arcsec (rms), whenever the coarse pointing was better than ± 45 arcsec peak-to-peak. The automatic focus adjustment maintained a focus stability of 0.01 waves in the focal plane of the CWS. During the 5.5 day flight, good image quality and stability were achieved during 33 hours, containing 45 sequences, which lasted between 10 and 45 min.
Related projects
Project Image
Solar and Stellar Magnetism
Magnetic fields are at the base of star formation and stellar structure and evolution. When stars are born, magnetic fields brake the rotation during the collapse of the mollecular cloud. In the end of the life of a star, magnetic fields can play a key role in the form of the strong winds that lead to the last stages of stellar evolution. During
Tobías
Felipe García