Phase-retrieval analysis of pre- and post-repair Hubble Space Telescope images

Abstract

Phase-retrieval measurements of point-spread functions from the pre- and post-repair Hubble Space Telescope are presented. The primary goal was to determine the aberrations present in the second wide-field and planetary camera (WFPC2) to align and validate its corrective optics. With both parametric model-fitting techniques and iterative (Gerchberg-Saxton) methods, accurate measurements have been obtained of the WFPC2 and Hubble Space Telescope optics, including improved maps of the zonal errors in the mirrors. Additional phase-retrieval results were obtained for the aberrated, prerepair cameras and the corrected faint-object camera. The information has been used to improve models produced by point-spread-function simulation programs. On the basis of the measurements a conic constant for the primary mirror of κ = -1.0144 has been derived.