August 2010:
Tuesday August 10th, 2010

Microsoft Research
1288 Pear Ave.
Mountain View, CA
(use rear/North door; parking all around Building 6 )

FREE
Please Register; $2 donation helps cover food; please bring your registration ticket

Computers and Telescopes: Seeing to the Edge of the Universe

Sidd Bikkannavar, Researcher, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

In every optical system, degradations in image quality result from wavefront error (aberrations in the shape of light, which prevent rays from converging at a single focal point). JPL has developed and successfully demonstrated software that measures the wavefront error of the entire optical system at once, using only the imagery collected from a point source of light. The Adaptive MGS Phase Retrieval software measures wavefront error with extremely high accuracy. Not only does this allow computer controlled correction of the optics during testing and assembly, but provides for intelligent control of active optical components (such as deformable mirrors) to correct wavefront error in already-built optical systems.

Siddarayappa (Sidd) Bikkannavar is a member of the Active Optics Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. He has contributed to several NASA projects, including ground and space-based active optical systems, testbeds and future studies related to advanced mirror technologies. Bikkannavar and his team were awarded the NASA Software of the Year medal for the Adaptive MGS Phase Retrieval algorithm.

Bikkannavar received bachelors degrees in Physics and Mathematics from Principia College, and completed his M.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California. He is currently involved in research in the areas of advanced image processing and wavefront sensing & control technologies.