[Raytrace] Zernike Polynomial Modeling (Was: Re: TCT (Tilted Component Telescope) designs

[John D. Upton]

John,

At 07:22 PM 1/17/02 -0500, John Francis wrote:
>Has anyone modeled a mirror profile using Zernike polynomials for input into
>a raytrace program? What I would like to do is use the actual test results
>from a mirror profile analysis and use this to evaluate the system Strehl
>ratio of a final "as built" TCT.

     I haven't seen any response to this part of your post last week.  I 
have never tried to do this, so I cannot help in that respect.  I am 
intrigued by the concept, though.

     Has anyone of this list done this before?  It would seem the ultimate 
way to assess the potential performance of a mirror (short of using it 
under near-perfect seeing conditions).  The real problem in attempting this 
would be the data reduction from Foucault (or Gaviola caustic, etc.) test 
data to a set of polynomial coefficients to enter into OSLO.

     What analysis tools might be available to help transform test 
measurements into polynomial coefficients?


John D. Upton
Georgetown, TX
<http://www.atm-workshop.com/>      "The ATM's Workshop Page"
<http://members.aol.com/RonWin20/>  "Ronchi For Windows Software Page"