Abstract
A segmented or diluted aperture optical system will undergo phase errors as a result of errors in the positioning of the segments. The errors associated with a segmented primary mirror limit the image quality obtainable with synthetic aperture telescopes. Here we study the effects of segmentation errors on image quality, considering both the phase angle and the amplitude of the optical transfer function (OTF). We show that, in these kinds of telescope, phasing and alignment errors among segments reduce the amplitude and distort the phase angle of the OTF.
© 2004 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Gary Chanan and Mitchell Troy
Appl. Opt. 38(31) 6642-6647 (1999)
Feenix Y. Pan, James H. Burge, Rene Zehnder, and Yanqui Wang
Appl. Opt. 43(13) 2632-2642 (2004)
James E. Harvey and Christ Ftaclas
Appl. Opt. 34(25) 5787-5798 (1995)