THE PERFORMANCE OF PARTIAL ADAPTIVE CORRECTION AT THE MULTIPLE MIRROR TELESCOPE

In this paper we investigate the relative merits of the uses of an adaptive mirror at the Multiple Mirror Telescope for improving imaging performance. This study, using simulated data for near-infrared seeing conditions, investigates the benefits of both wave front piston and tilt correction for each of the subapertures thereby predicting the performance of the recently installed six-element adaptive mirror. We also investigate how the post-detection correction technique of peak tracking improves the resulting image quality as well as the improvement in the performance of speckle imaging. The overall imaging performance is measured from the increase in Strehl ratio. The diffraction-limited imaging performance, not necessarily given by the Strehl ratio, is determined from the high-spatial frequency content of the images. This analysis both demonstrates the necessity of atmospheric compensation for interferometric imaging and investigates the adaptive performance of a monolithic aperture using a relatively small number of almost-equal-to r0 size subapertures.