W. Hackenberg
GRAVITY+ improves by orders of magnitude the sensitivity, sky-coverage and contrast of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). A central part of this project is the development of Gravity Plus Adaptive Optics (GPAO), a dedicated…
Tight relationships exist in the local universe between the central stellar properties of galaxies and the mass of their supermassive black hole. These suggest galaxies and black holes co-evolve, with the main regulation mechanism being…
Ground-based optical astronomical observations supported by or in the vicinity of laser guide-star systems can be contaminated by Raman-scattered laser photons. Anticipating, alleviating, and correcting for the impact of this self-inflicted…
(Abr.) Laser guide stars employed at astronomical observatories provide artificial wavefront reference sources to help correct (in part) the impact of atmospheric turbulence on astrophysical observations. Following the recent commissioning…
The first observations of laser guide star photons Raman-scattered by air molecules above the Very Large Telescope (VLT) were reported in June 2017. The initial detection came from the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) optical…
The sodium laser guide star adaptive optics system ALFA has been constructed at the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope. Following the first detection of the laser beacon on the wavefront sensor in 1997 the system is now being optimized for best…
Context: Sodium laser guide stars (LGS) are about to enter a new range of laser powers. Previous theoretical and numerical methods are inadequate for accurate computations of the return flux and hence for the design of the next-generation…
The Laser Guide Star Facility for the VLT will be commissioned during 2003. This, of course, can only be the first step towards enhancing the scientific output of the VLT through adaptive optics. So in this contribution we propose the…
The ALFA laser subsystem uses a 4 watt continuous wave laser beam to produce an artificial guide star in the mesospheric sodium layer as a reference for wavefront sensing. In this article we describe the system design, focusing on the…
The optimal performance of adaptive optics systems can only be maintained if the wavefront reference is bright and compact. Experience has shown that both of these important criteria are remarkably difficult to achieve with laser guide…
The importance of laser guide stars to the practical usefulness of adaptive optics cannot be understated, and yet there are very few working systems. This contribution discusses the current status of the ALFA laser guide star, with regard…
The sodium laser guide star adaptive optics system ALFA, which is installed at the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope, has been undergoing an intensive optimisation phase. Observations using natural guide stars that are presented in this paper,…
We present millimeter CO line emission observations of 12 galaxies within the Abell 262 cluster, together with L_FIR data, in the context of a possible molecular gas deficiency within the region of the cluster center. Several indications of…
We report on high angular resolution near-infrared (NIR) observations of three galaxy clusters at different redshifts using adaptive optics (AO). In the case of the barred spiral \object{UGC 1347} in Abell 262 we presented the first AO…