to avoid interference with the transmitted light from the illuminator beacon laser 222 the horizontally and vertically polarized light are then recombined and provided to a wavefront sensor 226 the wavefront sensor 226 determines optical aberrations experienced by the transmitted beacon light along the optical path to the object of interest 202 the determined aberrations can be used as part of an adaptive optics arrangement to precompensate for the aberrations during operation of the high power laser increasing its effectiveness in view of the examples shown and described above methodologies in accordance with the present invention will be better appreciated with reference to the flow diagrams of fig6 and 7 while for purposes of simplicity of explanation the methodologies are shown and described as executing serially it is to be understood and appreciated that the present invention is not limited by the order shown as some aspects may in accordance with the present invention occur in different orders and or concurrently from that shown and described herein moreover not all features shown or described may be needed to implement a methodology in accordance with the present invention additionally such methodologies can be implemented in hardware e g one or more integrated circuits software e g running on a dsp or asic or a combination of hardware and software fig6 illustrates a method 300 that might be practiced for example with the system illustrated in.