BOS , Steven

Context. High-contrast imaging (HCI) observations of exoplanets can be limited by the island effect (IE). The IE occurs when the main wavefront sensor (WFS) cannot measure sharp phase discontinuities across the telescope's secondary mirror support structures (also known as spiders). On the current generation of telescopes, the IE becomes a...

The Low Wind Effect (LWE) refers to a phenomenon that occurs when the wind speed inside a telescope dome drops below 3m/s creating a temperature gradient near the telescope spider. This produces phase discontinuities in the pupil plane that are not detected by traditional Adaptive Optics (AO) systems such as the pyramid wavefront sensor or the...