Related papers: First Light for the GRAVITY+ Adaptive Optics: Extr…
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…
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…
The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) entered on-sky commissioning and had its first-light at the Gemini South (GS) telescope in November 2013. GPI is an extreme adaptive optics (XAO), high-contrast imager and integral-field spectrograph dedicated…
The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a project dedicated to identifying optical counter-parts to gravitational-wave detections using a network of dedicated, wide-field telescopes. After almost a decade of design,…
Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) combines the advantages of standard adaptive optics, which provides high contrast and high spatial resolution, and of wide field ~1' imaging. Up to recently, MCAO for astronomy was limited to…
We develop a high-precision model for laser ranging interferometric (LRI) observables of the GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission. For this, we study the propagation of an electromagnetic wave in the gravitational field in the vicinity of an…
Since the year 2000, adaptive optics (AO) has seen the emergence of a variety of new concepts addressing particular science needs; multiconjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) is one of them. By correcting the atmospheric turbulence in 3D using…
We describe KAPAO, our project to develop and deploy a low-cost, remote-access, natural guide star adaptive optics (AO) system for the Pomona College Table Mountain Observatory (TMO) 1-meter telescope. We use a commercially available…
We show that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a powerful instrument in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). LIGO's ability to detect gravitational waves (GWs) from astrophysical sources, such…
Adaptive Optics has become a key technology for the largest ground-based telescopes currently under or close to begin of construction. Adaptive optics is an indispensable component and has basically only one task, that is to operate the…
Until recently, it has been possible only for nearby galaxies to study the scaling relations between central black hole and host galaxy in detail. Because of the small number densities at low redshift, (luminous) AGN are underrepresented in…
In the last decade, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the European Virgo observatory have opened a new observational window on the universe. These cavity-enhanced laser interferometers sense spacetime…
Adaptive optics (AO) is a key technology for ground-based optical and infrared astronomy, providing high angular resolution and sensitivity. AO systems employing laser guide stars (LGS) can achieve high sky coverage, but their performance…
The VLTI instrument GRAVITY combines the beams from four telescopes and provides phase-referenced imaging as well as precision-astrometry of order 10 microarcseconds by observing two celestial objects in dual-field mode. Their angular…
To evaluate a potential usually one analyzes trajectories of test particles. For the Galactic Center case astronomers use bright stars or photons, so there are two basic observational techniques to investigate a gravitational potential,…
SAXO+ is a planned enhancement of the existing SAXO, the VLT/ SPHERE adaptive optics system, deployed on ESO's Very Large Telescope. This upgrade is designed to significantly enhance the instrument's capacity to detect and analyze young…
We present near-IR images of five luminous quasars at z~2 and one at z~4 obtained with an experimental adaptive optics instrument at the ESO Very Large Telescope. The observations are part of a program aimed at demonstrating the…
The Gemini Observatory is planning to implement a Multi Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) System as a facility instrument for the Gemini-South telescope. The system will include 5 Laser Guide Stars, 3 Natural Guide Stars, and 3 Deformable…
The Gemini Planet Imager instrument's adaptive optics (AO) subsystem was designed specifically to facilitate high-contrast imaging. It features several new technologies, including computationally efficient wavefront reconstruction with the…
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…