Related papers: On-sky validation of image-based adaptive optics w…
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…
Direct imaging is the primary technique currently used to detect young and warm exoplanets and understand their formation scenarios. The extreme flux ratio between an exoplanet and its host star requires the use of coronagraphs to attenuate…
The major source of noise in high-contrast imaging is the presence of slowly evolving speckles that do not average with time. The temporal stability of the point-spread-function (PSF) is therefore critical to reach a high contrast with…
We propose the application of multiresolution transforms, such as wavelets (WT) and curvelets (CT), to the reconstruction of images of extended objects that have been acquired with adaptive optics (AO) systems. Such multichannel approaches…
The low wind effect (LWE) refers to a characteristic set of quasi-static wavefront aberrations seen consistently by the SPHERE instrument when dome-level wind speeds drop below 3 m/s. This effect produces bright low-order speckles in the…
Context. Adaptive optics (AO) is now a tool commonly deployed in astronomy. The real time correction of the atmospheric turbulence that AO enables allows telescopes to perform close to the diffraction limit at the core of their point spread…
Imaging faint companions (exoplanets and brown dwarfs) around nearby stars is currently limited by speckle noise. To efficiently attenuate this noise, a technique called simultaneous spectral differential imaging (SSDI) can be used. This…
A primary goal of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is to detect and measure the abundance of biosignature molecules, such as water (H2O) and oxygen (O2), in the atmosphere of Earth analogs. This is expected to require deep…
The limits for adaptive-optics (AO) imaging at high contrast and high resolution are determined by residual phase errors from non-common-path aberrations not sensed by the wavefront sensor, especially for integral field spectrographs, where…
Consistent operation of adaptive optics (AO) systems requires the use of a wavefront sensor (WFS) with high sensitivity and low noise. The nonlinear curvature WFS (nlCWFS) has been shown both in simulations and lab experiments to be more…
The detection and characterisation of extra-solar planets is a major theme driving modern astronomy, with the vast majority of such measurements being achieved by Doppler radial-velocity and transit observations. Another technique -- direct…
Accurate and precise measurements of the Hubble constant are critical for testing our current standard cosmological model and revealing possibly new physics. With Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging, each strong gravitational lens system…
Astronomers working with faint targets will benefit greatly from improved image quality on current and planned ground-based telescopes. At present, most adaptive optic systems are targeted at the highest resolution with bright guide stars.…
State-of-the-art coronagraphs employed on extreme adaptive optics enabled instruments, are constantly improving the contrast detection limit for companions at ever closer separations to the host star. In order to constrain their properties…
The Portable Adaptive Optics (PAO) is a low-cost and compact system, designed for 4-meter class telescopes that have no Adaptive Optics (AO), because of the physical space limitation at the Nasmyth or Cassegrain focus and the historically…
For ExAO instruments for the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs), alternative architectures of WFS are under consideration because there is a tradeoff between detector size, speed, and noise that reduces the performance of GSMT-ExAO…
Observational tests of ground layer wavefront recovery have been made in open loop using a constellation of four natural guide stars at the 1.55 m Kuiper telescope in Arizona. Such tests explore the effectiveness of wide-field seeing…
Optical aberrations prevent telescopes from reaching their theoretical diffraction limit. Once estimated, these aberrations can be compensated for using deformable mirrors in a closed loop. Focal plane wavefront sensing enables the…
Wavefront estimation is an essential component of adaptive optics where the goal is to recover the underlying phase from its Fourier magnitude. While this may sound identical to classical phase retrieval, wavefront estimation faces more…
Context. Several exoplanet direct imaging instruments will soon be in operation. They use an extreme adaptive optics (XAO) system to correct the atmospheric turbulence and provide a highly-corrected beam to a near-infrared (NIR) coronagraph…