SkyWave uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to reconstruct the wavefront of any telescope optical configurations from a single defocused star.


Wavefront analysis provides a precise quantitative evaluation of the all optical system and its related aberrations.


Telescope Collimation and Wavefront Sensing using AI


SkyWave retrieves the coma, astigmatism and the spherical aberrations from the wavefront and display it in modern rich and helpful GUI that will help you to collimate your telescope.


The telescope alignment, aka collimation, is the process of aligning the telescope elements, typically optical surfaces, relative to each others at their designed values for a given optical layout. 


SkyWave provides context-sensitive help. A useful help can be obtained from any points of the user interface. Context-sensitive help, as opposed to online help or online manuals, does not need to be accessible for reading as a whole. Each topic is supposed to describe extensively one state, situation, or feature of the software.


The user interface is organized in a way that all relevant information about the telescope collimation are displayed on a view designed as a target (called Collimator) which is subdivided in four radial areas that correspond a scale of the possible optical performances. The performances of your telescope are displayed with a rotating cursor hovering the target. 


To include/exclude aberrations in the optical analysis, three check boxes allows to select which aberrations will be taken in account in the result displayed by the cursor on the target.


The main user interface is divided in the following panels :


    1. Instrument selection and auto load settings
    2. Acquisition options and command buttons
    3. Simulation options and command buttons
    4. Current image view ports 
    5. Display option allow to select what is displayed in the current image panel
    6. Input frame information
    7. Optical feature of the selected instrument
    8. Measured central obstruction

 



Getting started


Prior starting to use SKW on the sky with your telescope we recommend to learn how to use the SkyWave by doing some simulations based on your telescope optical features.


Please follow the steps below to proceed:


To illustrate how abberations affect the defocused star in various case of aberrated optics caused by mirrors misaligments, we have prepared a set of synthetic image based on a Schmidt-Cassegrain 10" f/8 telescope. They are available on the installation package subfolder ".\samples\SCT10Simulation". A workspace is also available in the subfolder and configured for the SCT10 telescope, so you can load from SkyWave.


1. Configure your telescope optical feature in a new instrument

2. Select and connect your instrument

3. Playing with the simulator

4. Exploring the simulated defocused star through the various display option


Using SkyWave on your own telescope on the sky


Once you are familiar with the user interface you can try using SKW on the sky on your telescope


Please follow the steps below to proceed:


1. Go back to the instrument configuration and request a mathematical model


At first, we recommend that you request a trial model compatible with your telescope optical features. The trial models are limited in the amount of frames that you can analyze but it allows to test our software before buying a permanent model.


2. How to capture a suitable defocused star

3. Load, Locate, Select and analyze selected star


To learn more about how to use SkyWave, you can watch the various documentation, tutorials and videos available on our Web site