Korea Astronomy and Space science Institute (KASI) partnered with the Australian National University (ANU) to develop the adaptive optics (AO) system at the Geochang observatory with a 100 cm optical telescope for multiple applications, including spac...
Korea Astronomy and Space science Institute (KASI) partnered with the Australian National University (ANU) to develop the adaptive optics (AO) system at the Geochang observatory with a 100 cm optical telescope for multiple applications, including space geodesy, space situational awareness and Korean space missions. The AO system is designed to get high resolution images of space objects with lower magnitude than 10 by using themselves as a natural guide star, and achieve a Strehl ratio larger than 20% in the environment of good seeing with a fried parameter of 12–15 cm. It will provide the imaging of space objects up to 1,000 km as well as its information including size, shape and orientation to improve its orbit prediction precision for collision avoidance between active satellites and space debris. In this paper, we address not only the design of AO system, but also analyze the images of stellar objects. It is also demonstrated that the AO System is achievable to a near diffraction limited full width at half maximum (FWHM) by analyzing stellar images.