Characteristic Wavefront Sensor Performance

The figure below shows an example of the predicted image quality (50% encircled energy diameter) as a function of guide star brightness and guide star off-axis angle. There is essentially no dependence on guide star brightness until the knee in the performance curve beyond which the degradation is dramatic. There is a weak dependence on guide star off-axis angle.

Note: the detector performance is yet to be well characterised. The results shown here make conservative assumptions.

Last update October 13, 1999; Mark Chun and Phil Puxley