Related papers: ELT instrumentation for seeing-limited and AO-corr…

The Cassiop\'ee project aims to develop the key technologies that will be used to deploy very high-performance Adaptive Optics for future ELTs. The ultimate challenge is to detect earth-like planets and characterize the composition of their…

The highest three-dimensional (3D) resolution possible in in-vivo retinal imaging is achieved by combining optical coherence tomography (OCT) and adaptive optics (AO). However, this combination brings important limitations, such as small…

(Abridged) We consider the scientific case for a large aperture (10-12m class) optical spectroscopic survey telescope with a field of view comparable to that of LSST. Such a facility could enable transformational progress in several areas…

Adaptive Optics (AO) is an innovative technique that substantially improves the optical performance of ground-based telescopes. The SOAR Adaptive Module (SAM) is a laser-assisted AO instrument, designed to compensate ground-layer…

Astronomical adaptive optics (AO) has come into its own. Major O/IR telescopes are achieving diffraction-limited imaging; major facilities are being built with AO as an integral part. To the layperson, it may seem that AO has developed…

Active optics is defined as the control of the shape and the alignment of the components of an optical system at low temporal frequencies. For modern large telescopes with flexible monolithic or segmented primary mirrors and also flexible…

The recent implementation of the high-speed burst mode at the ISAAC instrument on UT1, and its propagation to other ESO instruments, has opened the door to observational capabilities which hold the potential for a wealth of novel results.…

Recently, the design study `Einstein gravitational wave Telescope' (ET) has been funded within the European FP7 framework. The ambitious goal of this project is to provide a conceptual design of a detector with a hundred times better…

The low-energy gamma-ray domain is an important window for the study of the high energy Universe. Here matter can be observed in extreme physical conditions and during powerful explosive events. However, observing gamma-rays from faint…

The SINFONI instrument for ESO's VLT combines integral field spectroscopy and adaptive optics (AO). We discuss detailed simulations of the adaptive optics module. These simulations are aimed at assessing the AO module performance,…

This paper aims at giving an update on the most versatile adaptive optics fed instrument to date, the well known and successful NACO . Although NACO is only scheduled for about two more years at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), it keeps on…

To overcome the travelling difficulty for the visually impaired group, this paper presents a novel ETA (Electronic Travel Aids)-smart guiding device in the shape of a pair of eyeglasses for giving these people guidance efficiently and…

We address three major questions in astronomy, namely the detection of biosignatures on habitable exoplanets, the geophysics of exoplanets and cosmology. To achieve this goal, two requirements are needed. First a very large aperture to…

Using the convolution of seeing and diffraction, the relation between seeing and aperture in the visibility of sunspots is explored. It is shown that even telescopes with apertures smaller than 5 centimetres are significantly affected by…

Adaptive optics normally concerns the feedback correction of phase aberrations. Such correction has been of benefit in various optical systems, with applications ranging in scale from astronomical telescopes to super-resolution microscopes.…

We present the results obtained with an end-to-end simulator of an Extreme Adaptive Optics (XAO) system control loop. It is used to predict its on-sky performances and to optimise the AO loop algorithms. It was first used to validate a…

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will use an active optics system (AOS) to maintain alignment and surface figure on its three large mirrors. Corrective actions fed to the LSST AOS are determined from information derived from 4…

The next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs), with their wide apertures and advanced Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) systems, will provide unprecedented sharp and deep observations, even surpassing the capabilities of…

METIS, the Mid-infrared ELT Imager and Spectrograph (formerly called MIDIR), is a proposed instrument for the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), currently undergoing a phase-A study. The study is carried out within the framework of…

Integral field spectrographs are major instruments to study the mechanisms involved in the formation and the evolution of early galaxies. When combined with multi-object spectroscopy, those spectrographs can behave as machines used to…