Related papers: Advanced wavefront sensing and control demonstrati…
MagAO is the new adaptive optics system with visible-light and infrared science cameras, located on the 6.5-m Magellan "Clay" telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. The instrument locks on natural guide stars (NGS) from…
(abridged) Extreme adaptive optics (XAO) encounters severe difficulties to cope with the high speed (>1kHz), high accuracy and high order requirements for future extremely large telescopes. An innovative high order adaptive optics system…
Since its beginnings, diffraction-limited ground-based adaptive optics (AO) imaging has been limited to wavelengths in the near IR ({\lambda} > 1 micron) and longer. Visible AO ({\lambda} < 1 micron) has proven to be difficult because…
Adaptive optics laser guide star systems perform atmospheric correction of stellar wavefronts in two parts: stellar tip-tilt and high-spatial-order laser-correction. The requirement of a sufficiently bright guide star in the field-of-view…
High quality, repeatable point-spread functions are important for science cases like direct exoplanet imaging, high-precision astrometry, and high-resolution spectroscopy of exoplanets. For such demanding applications, the initial on-sky…
The future generation of telescopes will be equipped with multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) systems in order to obtain high angular resolution over large fields of view. MCAO comes in two flavors: star- and layer-oriented. Existing…
Looking to the future of exo-Earth imaging from the ground, core technology developments are required in visible extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) to enable the observation of atmospheric features such as oxygen on rocky planets in visible…
Exoplanet direct imaging using adaptive optics (AO) is often limited by non-common path aberrations (NCPAs) and aberrations that are invisible to traditional pupil-plane wavefront sensors (WFSs). This can be remedied by focal-plane (FP)…
The direct detection and imaging of exoplanets requires the use of high-contrast adaptive optics (AO). In these systems quasi-static aberrations need to be highly corrected and calibrated. In order to achieve this, the pupil-modulated…
We describe the preliminary optimized layout for a partially optimized concept of an optical-8m class VLT-like 2x2 segmented camera where each channel is assisted by an equivalent of an MCAO system where the ground layer correction is…
The Extremely Large Telescopes will require hundreds of actuators across the pupil for high Strehl in the visible. We envision a triple-stage AO (TSAO) system for GMT/GMagAO-X to achieve this. The first stage is a 4K DM controlled by an IR…
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…
Exoplanet imaging uses coronagraphs to block out the bright light from a star, allowing astronomers to observe the much fainter light from planets orbiting the star. However, these instruments are heavily impacted by small wavefront…
Aero-optical beam control relies on the development of low-latency forecasting techniques to quickly predict wavefronts aberrated by the Turbulent Boundary Layer (TBL) around an airborne optical system, and its study applies to a…
High contrast imaging of extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks requires extreme wavefront stability. Such stability can be achieved with active wavefront control (WFC). The next generation of ground- and space-based telescopes will…
Extra-solar planets direct imaging is now a reality with the deployment and commissioning of the first generation of specialized ground-based instruments (GPI, SPHERE, P1640 and SCExAO). These systems allow of planets $ 10 ^ 7 $ times…
Adaptive optic (AO) systems delivering high levels of wavefront correction are now common at observatories. One of the main limitations to image quality after wavefront correction comes from atmospheric refraction. An Atmospheric dispersion…
In order to increase the corrected field of view of an adaptive optics (AO) system, several deformable mirrors (DM) have to be placed in the conjugate planes of the dominant turbulent layers (multi-conjugate adaptive optics, MCAO [Beckers…
Here we review the current optical mechanical design of MagAO-X. The project is post-PDR and has finished the design phase. The design presented here is the baseline to which all the optics and mechanics have been fabricated. The…
The future of space and ground based telescopes is intimately tied to technology and algorithm development surrounding wavefront sensing and control. Only with cutting edge developments and unusual ideas will we be able to build diffraction…