Solar imaging with a segmented adaptive mirror.

A 19-segment adaptive-mirror system is currently being used on the Sacramento Peak 76-cm Tower Telescope to remove wave-front distortions resulting from atmospheric turbulence. The system has proven to be capable of substantially improving the quality of an image, at times achieving 0.33-arcsec resolution in visible wavelengths under 1-3-arcsec seeing conditions. An improvement in resolution seems to occur across a large field of view that is, at times, 30 arcsec in diameter.