ATMOSPHERIC-TURBULENCE AND THE RESOLUTION LIMITS OF LARGE GROUND-BASED TELESCOPES - COMMENT

The paper by McKechnie [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9, 1937 (1992)] is discusse d, in which McKechnie tries to explain astronomers' visual description s of bright cores in star images by using his own model of atmospheric inhomogeneities, which is different from the conventional turbulent m odel. In this Communication we show that the star images presented by McKechnie are consistent with the traditional turbulent model. The McK echnie model of scattering, a single-scale atmosphere with the charact eristic scale L0 congruent-to 35 cm, contradicts all our experiences w ith turbulence: both direct in situ measurements of turbulent characte ristics and indirect experiments of wave propagation in a turbulent at mosphere.