Simulation of the PSF
Here is a movie showing simulations of the point spread function
arising from one particular realization of atmospheric turbulence as
the telescope aperture diameter is increased from .5 meters to 30
meters.
Diameter simulation
This simulation was performed by creating a turbulent layer at the
ground, placing an aperture at the ground, applying these "optics" to
a plane wavefront, and then propagating the resulting wavefront to the
far field to get the image plane amplitude. This procedure was
repeated for a range of aperture diameters. On the left is shown the
PSF in the presence of turbulence. On the right is shown the PSF in
the absence of turbulence. The diameter is printed in the upper left
corner of the movie, in meters.
The parameters for this simulation were:
Aperture diameter ranged from .5 to 30 meters, in steps of 5 cm
1 micron radiation
r0 of .5 meters at 1 micron
1 cm pixel scale in the wavefront
1 cm pixel scale in the turbulence layer
This simulation was generated using the program diameter_simulation, which is
provided as part of the Arroyo distribution.