Hi Guys, I'm working out spacing in my imaging train, Is there a maximum distance that the OAX should be from the imaging chip? is further away worse for AO performance? I'm guessing further away means smaller AO corrections are not as precise?? Kind regards Joshua Bunn
The distance is not critical. Yes the motion gets larger with more distance, but the movement has a lot of resolution and it won't be a problem. The calibration procedure takes care of any differences.
Practically, it probably doesnt matter if you are using typical amateur astro hardware. There are quite a large range of steps available to the gimbal actuators. You might calculate it out based on an assumption of a maximum of +/-20 pixels deflection off centre. The bigger issue is to ensure it is not vignetting or shifting the light sufficiently off-axis to distort the image.