Roddier testing

After some prodding by Mr. Highstone and questions from a few others, I
have written up a short cookbook on performing the Roddier test.
Essentially it is a star test performed outdoors and recorded with
a CCD camera (I use a ToUcam webcam). The resulting images are then processed
through special software to derive the aberrations including PTV, RMS, Zernike
coefficients, and Strehl ratio.

I have parked the stuff for now at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/roddier/.
You will need to join the group to get the stuff (sorry, I want to keep out
spammers). All the stuff is in the files area. The cookbook is about
3 MB PDF file, and there are some sample images to play with.

If you just want to try out the software, you can skip to about page 26 in the
cookbook to the "Roddier Analysis" section, and grab the example images. Have fun.

Clear skies. - John B.

Thanks John, this is a major advance for those of us who use interferometers at work but cannot afford one at home. Everyone has access to a plano wavefront with the star test, which subjective can be made quantitative with this type of instrumentation.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up!

Clear skies, Alan