Related papers: Focal Plane Wavefront Sensing using Residual Adapt…
Context. Solar wavefront sensing has been a challenge for astrophysical instrumentalists, due to the low contrast between the Sun and the sky background compared to night-time observations, which limits the performance of adaptive optics…
The MagAO-X instrument is a new extreme adaptive optics system for high-contrast imaging at visible and near-infrared wavelengths on the Magellan Clay Telescope. A central component of this system is a 2040-actuator microelectromechanical…
The current generation of ground-based coronagraphic instruments uses deformable mirrors to correct for phase errors and to improve contrast levels at small angular separations. Improving these techniques, several space and ground based…
This article begins with the discussions on the formation of speckles in the case of non-coherent quasi monochromatic source and of ways to detect them. Prior to this, a brief introduction on the behavior of the atmosphere and its effect on…
We present recent laboratory results demonstrating high-contrast coronagraphy for the future space-based large IR/Optical/Ultraviolet telescope recommended by the Decadal Survey. The High-contrast Imager for Complex Aperture Telescopes…
Context. Since 1995 and the first discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star, 4000 exoplanets have been discovered using several techniques. However, only a few of these exoplanets were detected through direct imaging. Indeed,…
We present a novel way of wavefront sensing using a commercially available, continuous-wave time-of-flight camera with QVGA-resolution. This CMOS phase camera is capable of sensing externally modulated light sources with frequencies up to…
NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to achieve starlight suppression to the $10^{-10}$ level for the detection and spectral characterization of Earth-like exoplanets. Broadband ozone absorption features are key biosignatures that…
Observing sequences have shown that the major noise source limitation in high-contrast imaging is due to the presence of quasi-static speckles. The timescale on which quasi-static speckles evolve, is determined by various factors, among…
The performance of high-contrast imaging instruments is limited by wavefront errors, in particular by non-common path aberrations (NCPAs). Focal-plane wavefront sensing (FPWFS) is appropriate to handle NCPAs because it measures the…
Context: Ground-based telescopes are susceptible to seeing, an atmospheric phenomenon that reduces the resolving power of large observatories to that of a home telescope. Compensating these effects is therefore critical to realizing the…
MagAO-X is the coronagraphic extreme adaptive optics system for the 6.5 m Magellan Clay Telescope. We report the results of commissioning the first phase of MagAO-X. Components now available for routine observations include: the >2 kHz…
It is widely believed that adaptive optics only has a role in correcting turbulent wavefronts on large telescopes using very bright reference stars. Unfortunately these are very scarce and many astronomical targets require wavefront…
Recent adaptive optics systems in astronomy achieve high-angular resolution. With the extreme stability of the images, detection at very low fluxes can be reached using a coronograph at the diffraction limit of the telescopes. This paper is…
Multi-object adaptive optics (MOAO) has been demonstrated by the CANARY instrument on the William Herschel Telescope. However, for proposed MOAO systems on the next generation Extremely Large Telescopes, such as EAGLE, many challenges…
To reach and maintain high contrast levels, coronagraph instruments will require a combination of low-order and high-order wavefront control techniques to correct for dynamic wavefront error. Efficient low-order wavefront sensing and…
Atmospheric turbulence causes fluctuations in the local refractive index of air that accumulatively disturb a wave's phase and amplitude distribution as it propagates. This impairs the effective range of laser weapons as well as the…
Advanced wavefront sensors (WFS) are essential for enabling new science cases for telescopes that utilize adaptive optics (AO) systems. While complex field WFS -- those that estimate the electric field phase and amplitude through…
Accurate astrometry and photometry of saturated and coronagraphic point spread functions (PSFs) are fundamental to both ground- and space-based high contrast imaging projects. For ground-based adaptive optics imaging, differential…
A new generation of telescopes with mirror diameters of 20 m or more, called extremely large telescopes (ELTs) has the potential to provide unprecedented imaging and spectroscopy of exo-planetary systems, if the difficulties in achieving…