When measuring image qualities of large aperture cameras, many factors like people moving around, blowing of air conditioners outlets, thermal convection, etc., will give rise to air turbulence (AT). AT mainly induces non-uniform distribution of air components in the image chain of large aperture camera image quality measurement systems, which will lead to variations of system wavefront errors. Thus, AT will introduce errors to measurement results of traditional image quality evaluation methods. Those errors increase with the camera aperture and are usually time-varying. This paper proposes a method to calibrate AT in real time when measuring image qualities of large aperture cameras. A defocused star point target (DSPT) is added to traditional test targets (TTT). The camera under test can capture images of TTT and DSPT simultaneously. The distance between the effective area of TTT and the DSPT is carefully designed so that the corresponding images do not overlap with each other. We calibrate AT induced wavefront errors by processing the DSPT images with phase retrieval method. Experimental results of AT induced wavefront errors calibrated by the proposed method are presented.
Large aperture space cameras are widely used in high-resolution remote sensing, ultra-weak space targets detection, high-precision astronomical observation, etc. Modulation transfer function (MTF) can directly reflect the information transmission ability of a space camera. Usually, the image quality of a camera is evaluated by measuring its MTF. The MTF of a space camera needs to be measured during alignment of the optical system and electronic system, preset of the vacuum focus position, mechanical experiment, thermal experiment, etc. This paper suggests a method to model the imaging chain of large aperture space camera MTF measurement systems. The model comprehensively considers the factors of the aberration of the collimator, air turbulence, temperature variation, gravity, and environmental vibration. We calibrate the aberration of the collimator, air turbulence, temperature variation, and gravity induced error by measuring the corresponding wavefront error with a 4D laser interferometer. A star point target is placed in the focus position of the collimator to calibrate the environmental vibration through extracting the centroids of the point target images captured by the space camera. The impacts of the previous factors on the MTF measurement results of the space camera are obtained with the proposed model and the corresponding calibration data. The proposed method can evaluate the impacts of different factors on the MTF measurement results and can guide the measurement of large aperture space camera MTF.
Sub-aperture stitching interferometry can be used for measurement of wavefront of large aperture optical system. A variety of sub-aperture stitching algorithms have been studied to reconstruct the sub-aperture data to obtain full aperture wavefront. The simultaneous fitting method plays an important role among those stitching algorithms which uses a series of global polynomials to accomplish the fitting of the test wavefronts, however, it can only be applied in the case of there have no overlap between each sub-apertures. Therefore, a modified simultaneous fitting method is proposed and is applied to measure the wavefront of large aperture optical system. The proposed algorithm is applicable whether there exists overlap between each sub-aperture or not. The numerical simulation is carried out to evaluate the accuracy of the algorithm. Further, a practical stitching experiment that test an optical system with a diameter of 850mm was implemented to demonstrate the modified algorithm.
For a wavefront tested by Shack-hartmann wavefront sensor, the zonal integration method is often chosen by researchers to solve the reconstruction problem. But it has shown an unacceptable result when the phase derivative data is distributed on an unconnected domain, the obtained wavefront will contain different piston error on each subdomain. Therefore, a new zonal wavefront estimation algorithm is proposed to deal with this drawback, which uses a simultaneous fit method to correct piston error of each subdomain. The validity of the algorithm is verified by a numerical simulation and experimental results.
Dues to its large capacity of information, super-speed transmission and high stability, laser communication has become a popular kind of satellite communication technology. Different from other kinds of communication technology, laser communication terminals (LCT) consists of optical systems with high imaging quality, high precise and rapid tracking systems. Testing the LCT on land is necessary to ensure its performance on the satellite. This article introduces a LCT-test and evaluation station (LCT-TES) in the laboratory. The LCT-TES is a high quality optical system providing laboratory measurements of the key characteristics of LCT, such as power testing, energy distribution of light spot in the far field, and the angle of beam divergence. The test precision of LCT-TES is also analyzed in this paper.
In order to ensure the on-orbit performance of space laser communication terminal(SLCT), the optical performance test under thermal vacuum conditions must be completed on the groud. In this paper, according to the requirements of SLCT, thermal vacuum optical performance test system was designed and developed. Its main testing capabilities include the divergence angle, polarization state, wave aberration, transmission power. Several SLCTs were tested by the system, the results show that the overall performance of the test system is stable and the thermo-optical test of SLCT can be completed well.
Absolute measurement with Phase Measuring Deflectometry (PMD) is gaining importance in industry, but the accuracy of deflectometry metrology is strongly influenced by the level of calibration. In order to improve the accuracy of the PMD to a level where it competes with interferometry, a reference calibration process is commonly carried out to carefully calibrate the systematic errors. The systematic errors obtained by measuring a high quality reference surface can be subtracted from the measurement of a test surface to get its actual surface, however, it could introduce the surface error of reference into the measurement. To alleviate this problem, this paper introduces a technique named “rotational shear phase measuring deflectometry”, this technique have the ability of removing the rotationally asymmetric systematic errors from the test surface without using a reference surface. The validity of this technique has been demonstrated by simulation and our experimental results.
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