A Multi-Application Solar Telescope
(MAST) is proposed to be installed at the Udaipur Solar Observatory (USO) inIndia to monitor
the Sun in optical and near infra-red wavelengths. The median value of the
Fried's parameter at this site is 4 cm. USO is in the process of building an
Adaptive optics (AO) system in order to have diffraction limited performance of
the MAST under this moderate seeing condition. AO helps in achieving
high-resolution imaging by compensating the atmospheric turbulence in real-time.
We have performed simulations to evaluate the performance of AO for various
seeing conditions. It was concluded that with the present availability of AO
system components, a 55 cm aperture telescope would yield optimum performance
with AO, in combination with post-processing techniques like speckle imaging and
phase diversity. At present, we are developing a proto-type AO system at USO to
demonstrate its performance with a 15 cm Coude refracting telescope as a
preparation for the main AO system to be deployed on the MAST. The prototype AO
system is being realized in two phases. In the first phase, we have developed an
image stabilization system to compensate the global tilt of the wave-front. The
second phase consists of sensing and correcting the local tilts of the
wave-front by integrating a micro-machined membrane deformable mirror with the
image stabilization system and is currently in progress.