Status of the 6.5m MMT Telescope laser adaptive optics system

Eduardo A. Bendek; Michael Hart; Keith B. Powell; Norman M. Milton; Vidhya Vaitheeswaran; Don McCarthy; Craig Kulesa; Shawn Callahan; S. Mark Ammons; Aurea Garcia Rissmann

doi:10.1117/12.857663

14 July 2010 Status of the 6.5m MMT Telescope laser adaptive optics system

Eduardo A. Bendek, Michael Hart, Keith B. Powell, Norman M. Milton, Vidhya Vaitheeswaran, Don McCarthy, Craig Kulesa, Shawn Callahan, S. Mark Ammons, Aurea Garcia Rissmann

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7736, Adaptive Optics Systems II; 77360O (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857663
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The Laser Adaptive Optics system of the 6.5 m MMT telescope has now been commissioned with Ground Layer Adaptive Optics operations as a tool for astronomical science. In this mode the wavefronts sampled by each of five laser beacons are averaged, leading to an estimate of the aberration in the ground layer. The ground layer is then compensated by the deformable secondary mirror at 400 Hz. Image quality of 0.2-0.3 arc sec is delivered in the near infrared bands from 1.2-2.5 μm over a field of view of 2 arc minutes. Tomographic wavefront sensing tests in May 2010 produced open loop data necessary to streamline the software to generate a Laser Tomography Adaptive Optics (LTAO) reconstructor. In addition, we present the work being done to achieve optimal control PID wavefront control and thus increase the disturbance rejection frequency response for the system. Finally, we briefly describe plans to mount the ARIES near infrared imager and echelle spectrograph, which will support the 2 arc min ground-layer corrected field and will exploit the diffraction limit anticipated with LTAO.

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Eduardo A. Bendek, Michael Hart, Keith B. Powell, Norman M. Milton, Vidhya Vaitheeswaran, Don McCarthy, Craig Kulesa, Shawn Callahan, S. Mark Ammons, and Aurea Garcia Rissmann "Status of the 6.5m MMT Telescope laser adaptive optics system", Proc. SPIE 7736, Adaptive Optics Systems II, 77360O (14 July 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857663

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