In the context of ADONI - the ADaptive Optics National laboratory of INAF - we are arranging for a facility, accessible to the AO community, in which visiting multi-purpose instrumentation, e.g. systems and prototypes of innovative AO concepts, may be directly tested on sky. The facility is located at the 182cm Copernico telescope in Asiago, the largest telescope in Italy, at its Coude focus, for which refurbishment activities are carried out, given that this focus was initially foreseen in the design, but never implemented and used till today. The facility hosts a laboratory where specialized visiting AO instrumentation may be properly accommodated on an optical bench for on-sky demonstrations. We present the current status of the facility, describing the opto-mechanical design implemented at the telescope that allows to redirect the light toward the Coude focus, the tests on the opto-mechanics carried on for stability verification, the integration of the optical and mechanical components within the preexisting structure.
@article{arxiv.1808.00788,
title = {A testing facility for AO on-sky demonstrations at the Copernico's Telescope within the ADONI framework},
author = {S. Chinellato and R. Ragazzoni and J. Farinato and D. Greggio and M. Dima and F. Biondi and S. Benetti and M. Bergomi and E. Cappellaro and E. Carolo and V. Chiomento and A. Frigo and L. Lessio and D. Magrin and L. Marafatto and G. Martorana and E. Portaluri and M. Rebeschini and L. Tomasella and L. Traverso and M. Turatto and G. Umbriaco and D. Vassallo and V. Viotto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.00788},
year = {2018}
}