Atmospheric tip/tilt compensation for laser beam tracking with amateur telescopes

Abstract

We present a rugged and reliable real-time beam stabilization system which is adapted on a mobile 10" amateur Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope (SCT) to demonstrate the functionality on different ground locations. Recently, the tip/tilt system was tested in horizontal direction on a 130 m free space propagation range. Tip/tilt compensation with a rootmean-squared accuracy better than 0.5 µrad has been confirmed. All system characteristics were measured in relation to metrological conditions and turbulence strength.