Related papers: A Design Study on Adaptive Primaries for 1-2 Meter…
A Cassegrain mounted adaptive optics instrument presents unique challenges for opto-mechanical design. The flexure and temperature tolerances for stability are tighter than those of seeing limited instruments. This criteria requires…
In ground-based astronomy, Adaptive Optics (AO) is a pivotal technique, engineered to correct wavefront phase distortions and thereby enhance the quality of the observed images. Integral to an AO system is the wavefront sensor (WFS), which…
Robo-AO is an autonomous laser guide star adaptive optics system recently commissioned at the Kitt Peak 2.1-m telescope. Now operating every clear night, Robo-AO at the 2.1-m telescope is the first dedicated adaptive optics observatory.…
This paper describes a concept for the high-accuracy absolute calibration of the instrumental polarization introduced by the primary mirror of a large-aperture telescope. This procedure requires a small aperture with polarization…
Recent work by Oberti et al, (Astron. Astrophys., 667, 48, 2022) argued and made a compelling case that classical astronomical adaptive optics (AO) tomography performance can be further enhanced by carefully designing and optically…
The utilization of a 6.5m monolithic primary mirror in a compact three-mirror anastigmat (TMA) telescope design offers unprecedented capabilities to accommodate various next generation science instruments. This design enables the rapid and…
We present two concepts of deformable mirror to compensate for first order optical aberrations. Deformation systems are designed using both elasticity theory and Finite Element Analysis in order to minimize the number of actuators. Starting…
Adaptive optics (AO) are reconfigurable devices that compensate for wavefront distortions or aberrations in optical systems such as microscopes, telescopes and ophthalmoscopes. Aberrations have detrimental effects that can reduce imaging…
The prototype Robo-AO system at the Palomar Observatory 1.5-m telescope is the world's first fully automated laser adaptive optics instrument. Scientific operations commenced in June 2012 and more than 12,000 observations have since been…
We describe the results from a new instrument which combines Lucky Imaging and Adaptive Optics to give the first routine direct diffraction-limited imaging in the visible on a 5m telescope. With fast image selection behind the Palomar AO…
Images obtained by microscopes are generally degraded by aberrations. Adaptive optics (AO) has been widely used in to compensate for aberrations and improve reduced image quality. Requiring no separate wavefront sensor, sensorless AO…
We summarize the theory of coronagraphic optics, and identify a dimensionless fine-tuning parameter, F, which we use to describe the Lyot stop size in the natural units of the coronagraphic optical train and the observing wavelength. We…
The major cornerstone of future ground-based astronomy is imaging and spectroscopy at the diffraction limit using adaptive optics. To exploit the potential of current AO systems, we have begun a survey around bright stars to study…
The WHT is unusually well-placed for exploitation of adaptive-optics (AO) technology. The site seeing is excellent (median 0.7 arcsec), dome seeing is negligible, and preliminary studies indicate that most of the atmospheric seeing…
Planned instruments utilising multi-object adaptive optics systems on the forthcoming extremely large telescopes require large numbers of high order deformable mirrors. These devices are a significant cost driver, particularly if…
Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) is essential for increasing the corrected Field-of-View (FoV) in astronomical imaging and potentially for free-space optical communications, particularly for small-aperture, transportable systems. We…
The Orbiting Astronomical Satellite for Investigating Stellar Systems (OASIS) is a proposed space telescope with a 14 m inflatable primary reflector that will perform high spectral resolution observations at terahertz frequencies with…
Active optics techniques on large telescopes and astronomical instrumentations provide high imaging quality. For ground-based astronomy, the co-addition of adaptive optics again increases angular resolution up to provide diffraction-limited…
Active optics techniques in astronomy provide high imaging quality. This paper is dedicated to highly deformable active optics that can generate non-axisymmetric aspheric surfaces-or freeform surfaces-by use of a minimum number of…
The Multiconjugate adaptive Optic Relay For ELT Observations (MORFEO, formerly known as MAORY) is the adaptive optics (AO) module for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) aimed at providing a 1 arcmin corrected field to the Multi-AO Imaging…