Framework to prepare for Project work in class on Tues Feb 26th:


State your science case in a few sentences. What objects will you observe,
and what do you need to learn from them?

Describe key aspects of your targets:
	Type of source (e.g. galaxy at redshift 4, centrosome 200 microns w/in cell)
	Target brightness (magnitude or photon flux)
	Point sources vs extended sources (how extended)
	Does target have steady flux or time-variable flux (on what timescales?)
	What wavelengths will you need to observe in order to learn your science?
	...

What is the nature of your backgrounds?
	Sky background (flux or magnitude per square arc sec on the sky)
	Scattered light from disk, or from parent star of a planet
	Biological background (scattered light from within cell, or from nearby cells?)
	Scattered light from whatever you are using as a laser guide star?
	...
	
Signal to noise ratio of your target:
If your AO system plus back-end instrument has an end-to-end transmission of
	35%, make a (very) rough estimate of how long will you have to observe in 
	order to reach a signal to noise ratio of 5? [We will refine this later
	once we decide upon a pixel scale, integration time, spectral resolution,
	etc]
	
What timescales will determine the speed at which your AO system needs to run?
	Examples: changes in atmospheric turbulence, changes in the target, deformation
	in the optics, ...

What are your options for wavefront references? What wavelengths do they have?
	Natural or laser guide star
	Fluorescent protein
	Quantum dots
	...
	
What are your options for wavefront sensor technologies?
	
What noise sources may be important for your wavefront sensor? Given the fluxes 
	and backgrounds you wrote about above, and given a plausible detector for
	your wavefront sensor, what physical process is likely to
	dominate the noise in your wavefront measurement?
	
Spatial resolution:
	Given the type of information you want to obtain from your target, what
	angular resolution will you require in imaging mode? (Explain what new 
	scientific information these images will give you at the improved 
	resolution you have specified)
	
	For the angular resolution required above, and for the desired observing
	wavelengths, what telescope or microscope diameter will you need, assuming
	that your AO system is capable of giving you diffraction limited resolution?

Based on your science case:

	What Strehl ratio will you need? Roughly what fraction of the light 
	from a point source will you need to fall within 1 x lambda/D? 
	Within 2 x lambda/D?
	
	If you are doing spectroscopy with high spatial resolution, what fraction
	of the PSF do you require to go through the spectrograph slit (or lenslet)
	in order to make a valid measurement?
	
	What percent sky coverage will you need? (Usually this is stated in terms
	of requiring a specific performance over at least xxx percent of the sky).
	
	If you are searching for faint objects such as planets around nearby
	stars, what contrast ratio will you need between the flux from the parent
	star and the flux from the planet, and how far from the star will this
	be measured?