Strobed imaging as a method for the determination and diagnosis of local seeing

The image quality budget of many telescopes can have substantial contributions from local seeing, both 'mirror' and 'dome', which arise from turbulence and temperature variations that are difficult to quantify, measure directly, and ameliorate. We describe a method to determine the 'local' seeing degradation due to wavefront perturbations within the final few metres of the optical path from celestial sources to the focal plane of a ground-based telescope, using the primary instrument and along the same path taken by light from celestial sources. The concept involves placing strobed emitters along the light path to produce images on the main focal plane that 'freeze' different realizations of index perturbations. This method has the advantage of measuring directly the image motion and scintillation imparted by the dynamic spatial and temporal structure of local perturbations in the index of refraction along the light path, with a clean separation from seeing induced in the atmosphere above the dome. The strobed-source approach allows for rapid image motion and scintillation to be measured directly on the focal plane, even for large-aperture telescopes with wide-field instruments and slow shutters, such as that being constructed for the Rubin Observatory. A conceptual design is presented that uses the 'guider' CCDs in the Rubin telescope focal plane to make local-seeing measurements on demand, perhaps even during science exposures.

Automated summary

The method described in the text utilizes strobed emitters along the optical path to measure the impact of local refractive index perturbations on image quality. This approach allows for direct measurement of image motion and scintillation, separate from the seeing induced by the atmosphere above the dome.