Related papers: Sky coverage for Layer Oriented MCAO: a detailed a…
The future generation of telescopes will be equipped with multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) systems in order to obtain high angular resolution over large fields of view. MCAO comes in two flavors: star- and layer-oriented. Existing…
We discuss a layer-oriented approach to multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) in solar imaging. The technique is a complement to the current star-oriented MCAO and appears as a necessary alternative when large field sizes are desired in…
Since the year 2000, adaptive optics (AO) has seen the emergence of a variety of new concepts addressing particular science needs; multiconjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) is one of them. By correcting the atmospheric turbulence in 3D using…
First multi-conjugate adaptive-optical (MCAO) systems are currently being installed on solar telescopes. The aim of these systems is to increase the corrected field-of-view with respect to conventional adaptive optics. However, this first…
One important frontier for astronomical adaptive optics (AO) involves methods such as Multi-Object AO and Multi-Conjugate AO that have the potential to give a significantly larger field of view than conventional AO techniques. A second key…
The Multi-conjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator, MAD, successfully demonstrated on sky the MCAO technique both in Layer Oriented and Star Oriented modes. As results of the Guaranteed Time Observations in Layer Oriented mode quality…
The performance of an adaptive optics (AO) system on a 100m diameter ground based telescope working in the visible range of the spectrum is computed using an analytical approach. The target Strehl ratio of 60% is achieved at 0.5um with a…
Adaptive optical correction is an efficient technique to obtain high-resolution images of the retinal surface. A main limitation of adaptive optical correction, however, is the small size of the corrected image. For medical purposes it is…
Adaptive optics laser guide star systems perform atmospheric correction of stellar wavefronts in two parts: stellar tip-tilt and high-spatial-order laser-correction. The requirement of a sufficiently bright guide star in the field-of-view…
In the last few years, new Adaptive Optics [AO] techniques have emerged to answer new astronomical challenges: Ground-Layer AO [GLAO] and Multi-Conjugate AO [MCAO] to access a wider Field of View [FoV], Multi-Object AO [MOAO] for the…
We overview the current status of photometric analyses of images collected with Multi Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) at 8-10m class telescopes that operated, or are operating, on sky. Particular attention will be payed to resolved stellar…
Orbital detectors without pointing capability have to keep their field of view axis laying on their orbital plane, to observe the largest sky fraction. A general approach to estimate the exposure of each sky element for such detectors is a…
Multi-object astronomical adaptive-optics (MOAO) is now a mature wide-field observation mode to enlarge the adaptive-optics-corrected field in a few specific locations over tens of arc-minutes. The work-scope provided by open-loop…
We describe results from the first astronomical adaptive optics system to use multiple laser guide stars, located at the 6.5-m MMT telescope in Arizona. Its initial operational mode, ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO), provides uniform…
In order to increase the corrected field of view of an adaptive optics (AO) system, several deformable mirrors (DM) have to be placed in the conjugate planes of the dominant turbulent layers (multi-conjugate adaptive optics, MCAO [Beckers…
A ground-layer adaptive optics system (GLAO) uses a single adaptive mirror to partially correct the wavefront for atmospheric and telescope aberrations over a wide field of view. Instead of reaching diffraction limit on a narrow field, the…
Both lucky imaging techniques and adaptive optics require natural guide stars, limiting sky coverage, even when laser guide stars are used. Lucky imaging techniques become less successful on larger telescopes unless adaptive optics is used,…
The Multiconjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator (MAD) has successfully demonstrated on sky both Star Oriented (SO) and Layer Oriented (LO) multiconjugate adaptive optics techniques. While SO has been realized using 3 Shack-Hartmann…
As new large-scale astronomical surveys greatly increase the number of objects targeted and discoveries made, the requirement for efficient follow-up observations is crucial. Adaptive optics imaging, which compensates for the image-blurring…
Large area surveys will dominate the forthcoming decades of astronomy and their success requires characterizing thousands of discoveries through additional observations at higher spatial or spectral resolution, and at complementary cadences…