In the earth telescope for space observation, the adaptive optical (AO) system that immediately compensates atmospheric turbulence is helpful to get high-resolution images. An adaptive optics for earth telescopes is very attractive, since the Earth telescopes can be made at lower costs and have larger optical apertures than space telescopes. Generally. in order to remove the wavefront error produced by atmospheric turbulence, a deformable mirror, whose surface shape changes in a controllable way in response to a drive signal, is used. The characteristics and patterns of actuators are very important for the effective control of a deformable mirror. The mirror surface shape deformed by one actuator is defined as an influence function and the deformable mirror can be effectively modeled and designed using this influence function. In this paper. by simplifying the actual influence function obtained by FEM analyses into the Gaussian function and introducing the coupling coefficient between actuators, the influence function is constructed. The proper coupling coefficient of the target system can be obtained by performance analyses of a deformable mirror for various coupling coefficients. Using the constructed influence function, the deformable mirror with equally spaced triangular and square actuator patterns is analyzed for various spacings and an effective actuator pattern is proposed.