Light microscopy and adaptive optics, my uncensored and biased opinions

If you are new to adaptive optics (AO) like me, the selection of right hardware can be daunting. Starting with a  wavefront sensor - they range in price, resolution, and many options which are not obvious. By practical trial and error I learned something about resolution, which wasn't obvious to me a year ago. The Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (WFS) is essentially a camera with a lenslet array instead of an objective.  There are sensors with 15x15 lenses, 30x30 and higher. Naively, you might think "the more the better" - we are digital age kids used to get high-res for cheap. However, there is a catch. High-res sensor, say, 30x30 lenslets, divides your photon count by 900 per spot. Roughly speaking, when you image a fluorescent bead (or another point source) by a camera with "normal lens" (not a lenslet array), and your peak intensity is 2000, this makes a very nice, high SNR bead image. However, is you switch to Fourier (pupil) plane and image the wave...

Mirao52e  from Imagine Optic is probably one of the best known high-stroke deformable mirrors (DMs), a working horse in adaptive optics. It has 52 actuators , huge stroke (up to +/- 50 microns peak-to-value), and a hefty 15-mm clear aperture of usable mirror surface. All things look good, at a price tag of about 20K euro . After some hesitation and comparing specs/price with Alpao mirrors, I eventually chose Mirao52e for my adaptive optics project. It is too early to speak of performance, I will do optical tests later. Today I can only share my first impressions. Pros: Small form factor: 64x64x17.6 mm, easy to integrate if your space is tight Very easy installation (Windows 7), basically installation of USB-serial port drivers  Cons: Mounting options are weird. There are two M3 tapped holes on each side, 20 mm apart. Does not fit any Thorlabs mount I know - they normally use M4 screws and 25-mm space between. No adapter included :( ...