The development of an optical design tool for atmospheric dispersion correction

Abstract

In ground based astronomical observations, atmospheric dispersion shifts the image of the object at different wavelengths due to the wavelength-dependent index of refraction of the atmosphere. Thus, using an Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC) is mandatory in order to avoid any wavelength dependent losses. Typical ADC configurations, for high resolution astronomical instruments, are two counter-rotating prisms, a set of, at least, four prisms paired together. With the arrival of large telescopes with higher angular magnification, and spectrographs with higher resolution, the requirements on the dispersion correction are becoming more critical due to the impact on the produced science (e.g. radial velocity precision). We developed an ADC optical design tool in order to select the best set of glasses in terms of residuals, transmission, resulting image quality, Fresnel losses, taking into account the required spectral range and typical atmospheric conditions where the ADC will be working. A demonstration of the capabilities of the tool is presented with the analysis of the impact of different melt data, the effect of different glass Sellmeier coefficients between catalog and measured ones, that can create a difference in the residuals above few tens of milli-arcseconds (mas). The tool allows the investigation of critical steps on the ADC design phase and speeds up the glass selection process critical for the harder requirements of the future instruments/telescopes.