Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology can provide for deformable mirrors (DMs) with excellent performance within a favorable economy of scale. Large MEMS-based astronomical adaptive optics (AO) systems such as the Gemini Planet Imager are coming on-line soon. As MEMS DM end-users, we discuss our decade of practice with the micromirrors, from inspecting and characterizing devices to evaluating their performance in the lab. We also show MEMS wavefront correction on-sky with the "Villages" AO system on a 1-m telescope, including open-loop control and visible-light imaging. Our work demonstrates the maturity of MEMS technology for astronomical adaptive optics.
@article{arxiv.1202.1566,
title = {MEMS practice, from the lab to the telescope},
author = {Katie M. Morzinski and Andrew P. Norton and Julia Wilhelmson Evans and Layra Reza and Scott A. Severson and Daren Dillon and Marc Reinig and Donald T. Gavel and Steven Cornelissen and Bruce A. Macintosh and Claire E. Max},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.1566},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
14 pages, 15 figures, Invited Paper, SPIE Photonics West 2012