Related papers: Performance Modeling of a Wide Field Ground Layer …
Global MCAO aims to exploit a very wide technical field of view to find AO-suitable NGSs, with the goal to increase the overall sky coverage. The concept foresees the use of numerical entities, called Virtual Deformable Mirrors, to deal…
In this paper we present the approach we have used to determine and account for the anisoplanatic point spread function (PSF) in deep adaptive optics (AO) images for the Survey of a Wide Area with NACO (SWAN) at the ESO VLT. The survey…
Context . Initially designed to detect and characterise exoplanets, extreme adaptive optics (AO) systems open a new window onto the Solar System by resolving its small bodies. Nonetheless, their study remains limited by the accuracy of the…
The SINFONI instrument for ESO's VLT combines integral field spectroscopy and adaptive optics (AO). We discuss detailed simulations of the adaptive optics module. These simulations are aimed at assessing the AO module performance,…
The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) is an integral field spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope Unit Telescope 4, capable of laser guide star assisted and tomographic adaptive optics using the GALACSI module. Its observing…
Differentiating between an exoplanet signal and residual speckle noise is a key challenge in high-contrast imaging. Speckles are due to a combination of fast, slow and static wavefront aberrations introduced by atmospheric turbulence and…
In addition to the BLINC/MIRAC IR science instruments, the Magellan adaptive secondary AO system will have an EEV CCD47 that can be used both for visible AO science and as a wide-field acquisition camera. The effects of atmospheric…
The Global-Multi Conjugated Adaptive Optics (GMCAO) approach offers an alternative way to correct an adequate scientific Field of View (FoV) using only natural guide stars (NGSs) to extremely large ground-based telescopes. Thus, even in the…
Reaching the high angular resolution and contrast level desired for exoplanetary science requires us to equip large telescopes with extreme adaptive optics (XAO) systems to compensate for the effect of the atmospheric turbulence at a very…
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…
Exoplanet detection and characterization through extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) is a key science goal of future extremely large telescopes. This achievement, however, will be limited in sensitivity by both quasi-static wavefront errors and…
One important frontier for astronomical adaptive optics (AO) involves methods such as Multi-Object AO and Multi-Conjugate AO that have the potential to give a significantly larger field of view than conventional AO techniques. A second key…
`Imaka is a ground layer adaptive optics (GLAO) demonstrator on the University of Hawaii 2.2m telescope with a 24'x18' field-of-view, nearly an order of magnitude larger than previous AO instruments. In 15 nights of observing with natural…
The effects of photon noise, aliasing, wavefront chromaticity and scintillation on the point spread function (PSF) contrast achievable with ground based adaptive optics (AO) are evaluated for different wavefront sensing schemes. I show that…
In astronomy and microscopy, distortions in the wavefront affect the dynamic range of a high contrast imaging system. These aberrations are either imposed by a turbulent medium such as the atmosphere, by static or thermal aberrations in the…
Access to knowledge of the point spread function (PSF) of adaptive optics(AO)-assisted observations is still a major limitation when processing AO data. This limitation is particularly important when image analysis requires the use of…
Since 2014, the LBT's First Light Adaptive Optics (FLAO) system has also included a seldom used capability, known as Enhanced Seeing Mode (ESM), that can improve the angular resolution over a 4' x 4' field of view (FOV). In full AO…
GRAVITY+ improves by orders of magnitude the sensitivity, sky-coverage and contrast of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). A central part of this project is the development of Gravity Plus Adaptive Optics (GPAO), a dedicated…
The main objective of the present project is to explore the viability of an adaptive optics control system based exclusively on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), making strong use of their parallel processing capability. In an…
We introduce a new algorithm for interpolating measurements of the point-spread function (PSF) using stars from many exposures. The principal components of the variation in the PSF pattern from multiple exposures are used to solve for…