Rayleigh Laser Guide Star for the Zeiss-2000 Telescope at the Terskol Peak Observatory

In this paper, the design and technical features of the Rayleigh laser guide star (LGS) system as a reference source of an adaptive optical system developed for use on the Zeiss-2000 telescope at the Terskol Peak Astronomical Observatory (coordinates 43°16'34'', 42°29'57'') have been described. Experiments have been performed using the Zeiss-2000 telescope to test the developed system. As a result, a signal from the LGS sufficient for the operation of the wavefront sensor has been received. The presented numerical estimates of the effectiveness of adaptive correction from the Rayleigh LGS have shown that in the future, the use of an adaptive optical system on this telescope will significantly improve the quality of the generated image by increasing the Strehl ratio by at least ten times.