Software solutions for numerical modeling of wide-field telescopes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a flexible, integrated software tool that combines ray-tracing and analytical modeling to quickly analyze the PSF of wide-field telescopes affected by misalignments, aiding in real-time correction and design.

Contribution

The paper develops a hybrid approach integrating Zemax ray-tracing with analytical models in a custom software package for rapid PSF analysis of wide-field telescopes.

Findings

Enables quick PSF reconstruction under misalignments

Automates statistical analysis of optical system responses

Provides a general, adaptable modeling framework

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated modeling software to analyze the PSF of wide-field telescopes affected by misalignments. Even relatively small misalignments in the optical system of a telescope can significantly deteriorate the image quality by introducing large aberrations. In particular, wide-field telescopes are critically affected by these errors, insomuch that usually a closed-loop active optics system is adopted for a continuous correction, rather than for sporadic alignment procedures. Typically, a ray-tracing software such as Zemax OpticStudio is employed to accurately analyze the system during the optical design. However, an analytical model of the optical system is preferable when the PSF of the telescope must be reconstructed quickly for algorithmic purposes. Here the analytical model is derived through a hybrid approach and developed in a custom software package, designed to be general and flexible in order to be tailored to different optical configurations. First, leveraging on the Zemax OpticStudio API, the ray-tracing software is integrated into a Matlab pipeline. This allows to perform a statistical analysis by automatically simulating the system response in a variety of misaligned working conditions. Then, the resulting dataset is employed to populate a database of parameters describing the model.