Optical Performance of Large Ground-based Telescopes

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Abstract
Images taken with ground-based telescopes are dominated by atmospheric seeing. Analytical expressions of long-exposure optical functions, namely the modulation transfer function, point spread function and encircled energy are established, under the assumption that dome and telescope seeing are brought to negligible values, and that the diameter of the telescope is larger than the atmospheric coherence length. The influence of guiding errors and axisymmetrical telescope aberrations is also assessed, and a definition of optical quality is proposed. The results are generalized and the optical performance of a ground-based telescope is expressed in terms of effective diameter and signal-to-noise ratio.

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