Related papers: Prototype of a laser guide star wavefront sensor f…
In this paper we present simulated observations of galaxies at z=2 and z=3 to probe the capabilities of next-generation telescopes (E-ELT and JWST) to measure the structural and photometrical properties of high redshift galaxies. We carry…
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…
High-resolution absorption spectroscopy toward bright background sources has had a paramount role in understanding early galaxy formation, the evolution of the intergalactic medium and the reionisation of the Universe. However, these…
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 Thirty Meter Telescope will use a sophisticated adaptive optics system called NFIRAOS. This system utilizes two deformable mirrors conjugate to 0 km and 11.2 km to apply a Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) correction over a 2…
Imaging exo-Earths is an exciting but challenging task because of the 10^-10 contrast ratio between these planets and their host star at separations narrower than 100 mas. Large segmented aperture space telescopes enable the sensitivity…
Quantitative spectroscopy of O-type stars in galaxies beyond 1 Mpc requires the unprecedented sensitivity of the so-called Extremely Large Telescopes. Visible spectroscopy with these exciting new facilities will give us the first chance to…
Future Extremely Large Telescopes will adopt segmented primary mirrors with several hundreds of segments. Cophasing of the segments together is essential to reach high wavefront quality. The phasing sensor must be able to maintain very high…
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…
Sky-coverage in laser-assisted AO observations largely depends on the system's capability to guide on the faintest natural guide-stars possible. Here we give an up-to-date status of our natural guide-star processing tailored to the…
As the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) approaches operational status, optimising its imaging performance is critical. A differential piston, arising from either the adaptive optics (AO) control loop, thermomechanical effects, or other…
Wavefront sensing in solar adaptive-optics is currently done with correlating Shack-Hartmann sensors, although the spatial- and temporal-resolutions of the phase measurements are then limited by the extremely fast computing required to…
Directly imaging Earth-like exoplanets (``exoEarths'') with a coronagraph instrument on a space telescope requires a stable wavefront with optical path differences limited to tens of picometers RMS during exposure times of a few hours.…
This paper is the third part of a trilogy dealing with the principles, performance and limitations of what I named "Telescope-Interferometers" (TIs). The basic idea consists in transforming one telescope into a Wavefront Error (WFE) sensing…
The very large telescope (VLT) interferometer (VLTI) in its current operating state is equipped with high-order adaptive optics (MACAO) working in the visible spectrum. A low-order near-infrared wavefront sensor (IRIS) is available to…
The Large Observatory for X-ray Timing (LOFT) is one of the five candidates that were considered by ESA as an M3 mission (with launch in 2022-2024). It is specifically designed to exploit the diagnostics of very rapid X-ray flux and…
The installation of the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) will revolutionize the study of high-redshift galaxy populations. Initial observations of the HST Ultra Deep Field (UDF) have yielded multiple z>~7…
ERIS is the new AO instrument for VLT-UT4 led by a Consortium of Max-Planck Institut fuer Extraterrestrische Physik, UK-ATC, ETH-Zurich, ESO and INAF. The ERIS AO system provides NGS mode to deliver high contrast correction and LGS mode to…
An important tool for the development of the next generation of extremely large telescopes (ELTs) is the Systems Engineering (SE). GMACS is the first-generation multi-object spectrograph working at visible wavelengths for the Giant Magellan…
The crossed-sine wavefront sensor (WFS) is a pupil plane wavefront sensor that measures the first derivatives of the wavefront. It is made by three main components: a gradient transmission filter (GTF) built from a product of sine functions…