SRAO: optical design and the dual-knife-edge WFS

Carl Ziegler; Nicholas M. Law; Andrei Tokovinin

doi:10.1117/12.2231297

SRAO: optical design and the dual-knife-edge WFS

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2016-11-23 v1

Authors: Carl Ziegler , Nicholas M. Law , Andrei Tokovinin

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Abstract

The Southern Robotic Adaptive Optics (SRAO) instrument will bring the proven high-efficiency capabilities of Robo-AO to the Southern-Hemisphere, providing the unique capability to image with high-angular-resolution thousands of targets per year across the entire sky. Deployed on the modern 4.1m SOAR telescope located on Cerro Tololo, the NGS-AO system will use an innovative dual-knife-edge wavefront sensor, similar to a pyramid sensor, to enable guiding on targets down to V=16 with diffraction limited resolution in the NIR. The dual-knife-edge wavefront sensor can be up to two orders of magnitude less costly than custom glass pyramids, with similar wavefront error sensitivity and minimal chromatic aberrations. SRAO is capable of observing hundreds of targets a night through automation, allowing confirmation and characterization of the large number of exoplanets produced by current and future missions.

Keywords

adaptive optics wavefront sensor dual-knife-edge SOAR telescope exoplanet

Cite

@article{arxiv.1608.00579,
  title  = {SRAO: optical design and the dual-knife-edge WFS},
  author = {Carl Ziegler and Nicholas M. Law and Andrei Tokovinin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.00579},
  year   = {2016}
}

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6 pages, 5 figures, presented at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation

SRAO: optical design and the dual-knife-edge WFS

Abstract

Keywords

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