Imaging Quality Control

All the imaging data from the past several years have been processed and entered in to our image quality data base. The analysis of these data have already proven to be very useful in checking the optical quality of the telescope, where it is clear that the current image quality is no longer affected by the tracking problems reported in the past, and regularly very good image quality is reached with all optical imaging instruments everywhere on the sky. The fact that there is no strong trend toward more elliptical images for the best seeing measurements shows that any image distortion in the system (mechanical or optical) is not very large.

We now also have an automatic focus analysing program for ALFOSC, where extensive tests has show it to be very reliable and we are now developing a script which will automatically take focussing data, process it and apply any necessary correction to the focus. This application is specifically intended for observers that need to do observations with ALFOSC when they are not using that instrument themselves.