Effect of anisotropic imaging in off-axis adaptive astronomical systems

¹ Instituto de Astronomia, UNAM AP 70-264 Cd. Universitaria, 04510 Mexico D.F., Mexico e-mail: voisteko@astroscu.unam.mx
² Area de Optica, Departamento de Fisica Aplicada, Facultade de Fisica, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Campus Sur, 15706 Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain e-mail: fagosxbv@usc.es

Send offprint request to: V.V. Voitsekhovich

Received: 7 October 1998
Accepted: 23 March 1999

Abstract

Effect of anisotropic imaging arising due to the off-axis adaptive correction is considered. The main manifestation of this effect is that the isophotes of the image of a star separated by some angular distance from the guide one have a non-circular form. It is shown that the effect of interest depends strongly on the observation conditions, and under certain conditions the image width in direction towards the guide star can be up to two times wider than in the transversal one. The results obtained can be used in practice for the reconstruction or calibration of images obtained after the off-axis adaptive correction.