Related papers: Characterizing the Adaptive Optics Off-Axis Point-…
Radial velocity instruments require high spectral resolution and extreme thermo-mecanical stability, even more difficult to achieve in near-infra red (NIR) where the spectrograph has to be cooled down. For a seeing-limited spectrograph, the…
Near-diffraction limited imaging and spectroscopy in the visible on large (8-10 meter) class telescopes has proved to be beyond the capabilities of current adaptive optics technologies, even when using laser guide stars. The need for high…
Large area surveys will dominate the next decade of astronomy, and the main limitation to science will be the thorough followup and characterization of their extremely numerous discoveries. The deployment of robotic laser adaptive optics on…
Ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO) systems offer the possibility of improving the "seeing" of large ground-based telescopes and increasing the efficiency and sensitivity of observations over a wide field-of-view. We explore the utility and…
The direct imaging of potentially habitable Exoplanets is one prime science case for the next generation of high contrast imaging instruments on ground-based extremely large telescopes. To reach this demanding science goal, the instruments…
Laser guide star (LGS) wave-front sensing (LGSWFS) is a key element of tomographic adaptive optics system. However, when considering Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) scales, the LGS spot elongation becomes so large that it challenges 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…
We have developed and tested a novel method, based on LIDAR, of measuring the height and profile of the mesospheric sodium layer using a continuous wave laser. It is more efficient than classical LIDAR as the laser is on for 50% of the…
HWO's Tier 1 Contrast Stability Technology Gap presents a key challenge for technology development in the coming years, requiring to a >100x more stable system than JWST. WaveDriver is a concept for a laser guide star spacecraft coupled to…
The pyramid wavefront sensor (P-WFS) has replaced the Shack-Hartmann (SH-) WFS as sensor of choice for high performance adaptive optics (AO) systems in astronomy because of its flexibility in pupil sampling, its dynamic range, and its…
One of the key-points for the future developments of the multiconjugate adaptive optics for the astronomy is the availability of the correction for a large fraction of the sky. The sky coverage represents one of the limits of the existing…
AOLI (Adaptive Optics Lucky Imager) is a state-of-art instrument that combines adaptive optics (AO) and lucky imaging (LI) with the objective of obtaining diffraction limited images in visible wavelength at mid- and big-size ground-based…
The MCAO Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph (MAVIS) is a new visible instrument for ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). Its Adaptive Optics Module (AOM) must provide extreme adaptive optics correction level at low galactic latitude and…
We describe the time- and position-dependent point spread function (PSF) variation of the Wide Field Channel (WFC) of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) with the principal component analysis (PCA) technique. The time-dependent change is…
The direct imaging and characterization of exoplanets requires extreme adaptive optics (XAO), achieving exquisite wavefront correction (upwards of 90$\%$ Strehl) over a narrow field of view (a few arcseconds). For these XAO systems the…
We review astronomical results in the visible (lambda <1 micron) with adaptive optics and note the status the MagAO system and the recent upgrade to visible camera's Simultaneous/Spectra Differential Imager (SDI to SDI+) mode. Since…
The Laser Guide Star Facility for the VLT will be commissioned during 2003. This, of course, can only be the first step towards enhancing the scientific output of the VLT through adaptive optics. So in this contribution we propose the…
Adaptive optics systems are critical in any application where highly resolved imaging or beam control must be performed through a dynamic medium. Such applications include astronomy and free-space optical communications, where light…
Adaptive optics (AO) is a powerful tool employed across various research fields, from aerospace to microscopy. Traditionally, AO has focused on correcting optical phase aberrations, with recent advances extending to polarisation…
Context: High contrast imaging is a powerful technique to detect and characterize planetary companions at large orbital separations from their parent stars. Aims: We aim at studying the limiting magnitude of the VLT/SPHERE Adaptive Optics…