Related papers: MAORY: A Multi-conjugate Adaptive Optics RelaY for…

Atmospheric turbulence and precise measurement of the astrometric baseline vector between any two telescopes are two major challenges in implementing phase referenced interferometric astrometry and imaging. They limit the performance of a…

In astronomy or biological imaging, refractive index inhomogeneities of e.g. atmosphere or tissues induce optical aberrations which degrade the desired information hidden behind the medium. A standard approach consists in measuring these…

Direct imaging of exoplanet systems requires the use of coronagraphs to reach high contrast levels (10^-8 to 10^-11) at small angular separations (0.1"). However, the performance of these devices is drastically limited by aberrations (in…

Extreme wavefront correction is required for coronagraphs on future space telescopes to reach 1e-8 or better starlight suppression for the direct imaging and characterization of exoplanets in reflected light. Thus, a suite of wavefront…

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology can provide for deformable mirrors (DMs) with excellent performance within a favorable economy of scale. Large MEMS-based astronomical adaptive optics (AO) systems such as the Gemini Planet…

Future Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) will require advances in Adaptive Optics (AO) systems to fully realize their potential. In addition to separate, dedicated wavefront sensors, it is recognized that wavefront sensing within the…

There are 8000 galaxies, including 1600 at z larger than 1.6, which could be simultaneously observed in an E-ELT field of view of 40 sq. arcmin. A considerable fraction of astrophysical discoveries require large statistical samples, which…

Due to turbulence in the atmosphere images taken from ground-based telescopes become distorted. With adaptive optics (AO) images can be given greater clarity allowing for better observations with existing telescopes and are essential for…

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…

This is the second article in a series of two which report on a matrix approach for ultrasound imaging in heterogeneous media. This article describes the quantification and correction of aberration, i.e. the distortion of an image caused by…

Adaptive Optics at mid-IR wavelengths has long been seen as either not necessary or easy. The impact of atmospheric turbulence on the performance of 8-10 meter class telescopes in the mid-IR is relatively small compared to other performance…

We investigate methods to calibrate the non-common path aberrations at an adaptive optics system having a wavefront-correcting device working at an extremely high resolution (larger than 150x150). We use focal-plane images collected…

The Ingot wavefront sensor is a novel pupil-plane wavefront sensor, specifically designed to cope with the elongation typical of the extended nature of the Laser Guide Star (LGS). In the framework of the ELT, we propose an optical solution…

We report on our ongoing efforts to ensure that the MICADO NIR imager reaches differential absolute (often abbreviated: relative) astrometric performance limited by the SNR of typical observations. The exceptional 39m diameter collecting…

Direct imaging of exoplanets requires very high contrast levels, which are obtained using coronagraphs. But residual quasi-static aberrations create speckles in the focal plane downstream of the coronagraph which mask the planet. This…

We discuss how to optimise the science output of the European Solar Telescope (EST), when used without the wide-field compensation for high-altitude seeing that the EST multi conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) will offer. This will be the…

Diffraction limited resolution adaptive optics (AO) correction in visible wavelengths requires a high performance control. In this paper we investigate infinite impulse response filters that optimize the wavefront correction: we tested…

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…

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 Einstein Telescope (ET) is a proposed third generation ground-based interferometer, for which the target is a sensitivity that is a factor of ten better than Advanced LIGO and a frequency range that extends down to about 1Hz. ET will…