MICADO is the ELT first light instrument, an imager working at the diffraction limit of the telescope thanks to two adaptive optics (AO) modes: a single conjugate one (SCAO), available at the instrument first light and developed by the MICADO consortium, and a multi conjugate one (MCAO), developed by the MORFEO consortium.
This contribution presents an overview of the SCAO module while MICADO and its SCAO are in the last phase of their final design review. We focus on the SCAO architecture choices and present the final design of the SCAO subsystems: the Green Doughnut structure, the SCAO wavefront sensor, the SCAO calibration unit, the SCAO ICS (i.e. AOCS) and the SCAO RTC. We also present the SCAO global performance in terms of AO correction, obtained from an error budget that includes contributors estimated from AO end-to-end simulations as well as instrumental contributors. Finally, we present the current SCAO subsystems prototyping and the main milestones of the SCAO AIT plan.SHARK-NIR is an instrument which provides direct imaging, coronagraphic imaging, dual band imaging and low resolution spectroscopy in Y, J and H bands, taking advantage of the outstanding performance of the Large Binocular Telescope AO systems. Binocular observations will be provided used in combination with SHARK-VIS (operating in V band) and LMIRCam of LBTI (operating from K to M bands), in a way to exploit coronagraphic simultaneous observations in three different wavelengths.
A wide variety of coronagraphic techniques have been implemented in SHARK-NIR, ranging from conventional ones such as the Gaussian Lyot, to others quite robust to misalignments such as the Shaped Pupil, to eventually techniques more demanding in term of stability during the observation, as the Four Quadrant; the latter is giving in theory and simulations outstanding contrast, and it is supported in term of stability by the SHARK-NIR internal fast tip-tilt loop and local NCPA correction, which should ensure the necessary stability allowing this technique to operate at its best.
The main science case is of course exoplanets search and characterization and young stellar systems, jets and disks characterization, although the LBT AO extreme performance, allowing to reach excellent correction even at very faint magnitudes, may open to science previously difficult to be achieved, as for example AGN and QSO morphological studies.
The institutes participating to the SHARK-NIR consortium which designed and built the instrument are Istituto Nazionale di Astro Fisica (INAF, Italy), the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA, Heidelberg, Germany) and University of Arizona/Steward Observatory (UoA/SO, Tucson, Az, USA). We report here about the SHARK-NIR status, that should achieve first light at LBT before the end of 2022.We present in the following the MICADO-MAORY SCAO specifications, the current SCAO prototyping activities at LESIA for E-ELT scale pyramid wavefront sensor (WFS) and real-time computer (RTC), our activities on end-to-end AO simulations and the current preliminary design of SCAO subsystems. We finish by presenting the implementation and current design studies for the high-contrast imaging mode of MICADO, which will make use of the SCAO correction offered to the instrument.
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