Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Tip-tilt mirror
A tip-tilt mirror is a rapidly moving mirror that can make small rotations around its two axis.
They are used in last-generation telescopes, to correct the aberration introduced by the atmosphere on the light path and improve image quality over what would be possible according to the night seeing.
A significant fraction of the aberration results in simply moving the image by a small amount, in a random direction that changes several times a second. A tip-tilt mirror is introduced in the optical path of the telescope, and is moved in realtime to reposition the image in its theoretical center. A fast detector is needed to achieve good results.
09-23-2007 01:00:40
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The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details