S. Mark Ammons

I have led the laboratory component of the CfAO Adaptive Optics Summer School in Santa Cruz in 2007-2008.  

Over two days, 60 graduate students, postdocs, and researchers engage in laboratory inquiries focused on adaptive optics.  The three activities are:

1.  Aligning the AO Demonstrator
2.  Investigating the Eye with Wavefront Sensors
3.  Understanding Fourier Optics

I designed and built the AO Demonstrator, a $25k self-enclosed adaptive optics system exclusively for education.  

Centered around an AgilOptics 37-actuator deformable mirror, the demonstrator corrects turbulence at 30 Hz.  Three of these systems have been used in 2-hour activities to teach the principles of adaptive optics to over one hundred undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs. 

Anne Rajala (second-year project, 2007-2009)
    Co-mentored Anne (first-year graduate student at UCSC) in OSIRIS analysis of
    NGC6240.

Mark Mozena (second-year project, 2007-2009)
    Co-mentored Mark (first-year graduate student at UCSC) in morphological analysis
    of 150 field galaxies in CfAO Treasury Survey LGSAO images.

James Ah Heong (senior year project, Feb - Aug 2007)
    Co-supervised James (undergraduate at University of Hawaii, Hilo) in the
    construction of an Iris-AO MEMS-based adaptive optics demonstrator.

Joe Curamen (short-term project, March 2005)
    Supervised Joe (Maui Community College, Maui, HI) for one month in the
    construction of an adaptive optics demonstrator using an AgilOptics 37 actuator DM.