Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2008-12-01
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
13 pages, 1 table, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal. Expected March 2009
Scientific paper
10.1088/0004-637X/693/2/1814
We describe results from the first astronomical adaptive optics system to use multiple laser guide stars, located at the 6.5-m MMT telescope in Arizona. Its initial operational mode, ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO), provides uniform stellar wavefront correction within the 2 arc minute diameter laser beacon constellation, reducing the stellar image widths by as much as 53%, from 0.70 to 0.33 arc seconds at lambda = 2.14 microns. GLAO is achieved by applying a correction to the telescope's adaptive secondary mirror that is an average of wavefront measurements from five laser beacons supplemented with image motion from a faint stellar source. Optimization of the adaptive optics system in subsequent commissioning runs will further improve correction performance where it is predicted to deliver 0.1 to 0.2 arc second resolution in the near-infrared during a majority of seeing conditions.
Baranec Christoph
Hart Michael
Kulesa Craig
McCarthy Don
Milton Norman M.
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