Client: Astrophysical Institute of Canary Islands (GTC-IAC)
Year: 2008 –2009
LIDAX has developed Simulators which allow to reproduce the behavior of an astronomical telescope when observing stellar objects – from the light source to the optical features of the telescope, including the atmospheric turbulence.
An Atmosphere and Telescope Simulator have been already designed and delivered to IAC. Their main characteristics are the following:
1. Three different telescopes simulated at the same time (GTC, WHT and OGS)
2. Up to twelve binary stars are simulated with angular separations down to 0.025 arcsec (GTC diffraction limit). The spectral content of the stars’ light is 0.5-1μ
3. Each binary star is provided with independent variable attenuation
4. Three different turbulence layers with a total of 5 different phase plates at the same time
The available altitude range for each telescope is:
1. A Shack- Hartmann WFS is included to evaluate the turbulence before reaching the simulated telescopes
2. CCD camera to obtain the telescope images and to check the turbulence effect
