Elisa Portaluri

The young nuclear stellar disc in the SB0 galaxy NGC 1023

Small kinematically-decoupled stellar discs with scalelengths of a few tens of parsec are known to reside in the centre of galaxies. Different mechanisms have been proposed to explain how they form, including gas dissipation and merging of globular clusters. Using archival Hubble Space Telescope imaging and ground-based integral-field spectroscopy, we investigated the structure and stellar populations of the nuclear stellar disc hosted in the interacting SB0 galaxy NGC 1023. The stars of the nuclear disc are remarkably younger and more metal rich with respect to the host bulge. These findings support a scenario in which the nuclear disc is the end result of star formation in metal enriched gas piled up in the galaxy centre. The gas can be of either internal or external origin, i.e. from either the main disc of NGC 1023 or the nearby satellite galaxy NGC 1023A. The dissipationless formation of the nuclear disc from already formed stars, through the migration and accretion of star clusters into the galactic centre is rejected.

Extending the pyramid WFS to LGSs: the INGOT WFS

Laser Guide Stars are, in spite of their name, all but “stars”. They do not stand at infinite distance, neither on a plane. If fired from the side of a large telescope their characteristics as seen from various points on the apertures changes dramatically. As they extend in a 3D world, there is need of a WFS that deploy in a similar 3D manner, in the conjugated volume, resembling the approach that MCAO required long time ago to overcome the usual limitations of conventional AO. We describe a class of a novel kind of WFS that employ a combination of refraction and reflection, such that they can convey the light from an LGS into a limited number of pupils, making the device compact, doable with a single piece of glass, and able to feed a minimum sized format detector where the information is collected maximizing the information depending from which part of the LGS the light is coming from, and on which portion of the telescope aperture the light is landing. They represent, in our opinion, the best-known adaptation of the pyramid WFS for NGS to the LGS world. As in the natural reference case the practical advantages come along with some fundamental advantages. Being a pupil plane WFS with the perturbator placed on the (3D) loci of focus of the various portions of the source of light they have the potentiality to extend WFS to a number of issues, including the ability to sense the islands effect, where non-contiguous portions of the main apertures are optically displaced. Further to their description and the main recipes we speculate onto possible variations on cases where the LGS is fired from the back of the secondary mirror and we exploit some potential features when implementing onto an extremely large aperture.

The Chandra Deep Field South as a test case for Global Multi Conjugate Adaptive Optics

The era of the next generation of giant telescopes requires not only the advent of new technologies but also the development of novel methods, in order to exploit fully the extraordinary potential they are built for. Global Multi Conjugate Adaptive Optics (GMCAO) pursues this approach, with the goal of achieving good performance over a field of view of a few arcmin and an increase in sky coverage. In this article, we show the gain offered by this technique to an astrophysical application, such as the photometric survey strategy applied to the Chandra Deep Field South as a case study. We simulated a close-to-real observation of a 500 x 500 arcsec^2 extragalactic deep field with a 40-m class telescope that implements GMCAO. We analysed mock K-band images of 6000 high-redshift (up to z = 2.75) galaxies therein as if they were real to recover the initial input parameters. We attained 94.5 per cent completeness for source detection with SEXTRACTOR. We also measured the morphological parameters of all the sources with the two-dimensional fitting tools GALFIT. The agreement we found between recovered and intrinsic parameters demonstrates GMCAO as a reliable approach to assist extremely large telescope (ELT) observations of extragalactic interest.

The kinematics of σ-drop bulges from spectral synthesis modelling of a hydrodynamical simulation

A minimum in stellar velocity dispersion is often observed in the central regions of disc galaxies. To investigate the origin of this feature, known as a {\sigma}-drop, we analyse the stellar kinematics of a high-resolution N-body + smooth particle hydrodynamical simulation, which models the secular evolution of an unbarred disc galaxy. We compared the intrinsic mass-weighted kinematics to the recovered luminosity-weighted ones. The latter were obtained by analysing synthetic spectra produced by a new code, SYNTRA, that generates synthetic spectra by assigning a stellar population synthesis model to each star particle based on its age and metallicity. The kinematics were derived from the synthetic spectra as in real spectra to mimic the kinematic analysis of real galaxies. We found that the recovered luminosity-weighted kinematics in the centre of the simulated galaxy are biased to higher rotation velocities and lower velocity dispersions due to the presence of young stars in a thin and kinematically cool disc, and are ultimately responsible for the {\sigma}-drop.

Aligning the demonstration model of CHEOPS

CHEOPS (CHaracterizing ExOPlanets Satellite) is an ESA Small Mission, planned to be launched in mid-2018 and whose main goal is the photometric precise characterization of radii of exoplanets orbiting bright stars (V<12) already known to host planets. Given the fast-track nature of this mission, we developed a non-flying Demonstration Model, whose optics are flight representative and whose mechanics provides the same interfaces of the flight model, but is not thermally representative. In this paper, we describe CHEOPS Demonstration Model handling, integration, tests, alignment and characterization, emphasizing the verification of the uncertainties in the optical quality measurements introduced by the starlight simulator and the way the alignment and optical surfaces are measured.

GMCAO for E-ELT: a feasibility study

In this paper, we discuss the feasibility and the performance assessment of a possible MCAO system for E-ELT, basedon the novel concept of Global MCAO, which takes advantage of a very wide technical FoV to perform adaptive opticscorrection using only natural guide stars, with the aim to increase the sky coverage. The technique envisages thedefinition of Virtual-DMs, as tools for the global reconstruction. This investigation has been carried out during afeasibility study we performed for ESO, in which we combined computations, simulations and literature. The aim of thisanalysis is to identify and review the main parameters and the technical issues, which would act as error sources in a realGMCAO system, evaluating their contribution to the overall performance. The study involves both issues related to thePyramid WFS in general, and to the GMCAO case in particular, including the wavelength and FoV size selection, thenumber of guide stars and reconstructed Virtual-DMs, and actual components parameters.

Statistical and morphological analysis of mock galactic fields in the Global-MCAO perspective

Enabling accurate morphological and photometric analysis across a wide Field of View (FoV) is one of the keyscience requirement for multi-conjugate adaptive optics systems. With this motivation we present a study aimedat the investigation of the performance of Global-MCAO (GMCAO). Such an innovative concept, based onnatural guide stars in a wide technical FoV, addresses the need for an increase of the sky coverage, which is akey ingredient for future MCAO-based VLT instruments and for the forthcoming E-ELT. Using a tomographicsimulation tool, we compute a map of the Strehl Ratio in a 250′′ × 250′′ area, matching the Chandra Deep FieldSouth survey. Mock images of star and galactic fields are then built using such a map and analyzed as if theywere real and observed with the E-ELT instrumentation. We perform the source detection and two-dimensionallight-profile modeling using the IRAF/ELLIPSE code and we then compare the recovered parameters with theintrinsic data. The good match of our results claims that GMCAO is a reliable approach that can rebuild theAO concepts and can provide a frame of reference for a number of science cases.

From a demonstration model to the flight model: AIV procedures and results for CHEOPS telescope

CHEOPS (CHaracterizing ExOPlanets Satellite) is an ESA Small Mission, planned to be launched in early 2019 and whose main goal is the photometric precise characterization of the radii of exoplanets orbiting bright stars (V<12) already known to host planets. The telescope is composed by two optical systems: a compact on-axis F/5 Ritchey-Chrétien, with an aperture of 320 mm and a Back-End Optics, reshaping a defocused PSF on the detector. In this paper we describe how alignment and integration, as well as ground support equipment, realized on a demonstrator model at INAF Padova, evolved and were successfully applied during the AIV phase of the flight model telescope subsystem at LEONARDO, the Italian industrial prime contractor premises.

The AIV concept of SHARK-NIR, a new coronagraph for the Large Binocular Telescope

SHARK-NIR is one of the forthcoming instruments of the Large Binocular Telescope second generation instruments. Due to its coronagraphic nature, coupled with low resolution spectroscopy capabilities, it will be mainly devoted to exoplanetary science, but its FoV of 18 x 18 arcsec and very high contrast imaging capabilities will allow to exploit also other intriguing scientific cases. The instrument has been conceived and designed to fully exploit the exquisite adaptive optics correction delivered by the FLAO module, which will be improved with the SOUL upgrade, and will implement different coronagraphic techniques, with contrast as high as 10-6 up to 65 mas from the star. Despite the wavelength range of SHARK-NIR is 0.96-1.7 um, the instrument is designed to work in synergy with SHARK-VIS and with LMIRcam, on board of LBTI. The contemporary acquisition from these instruments will extend the wavelength coverage from M band down to the visible radiation. The physical location of the instrument, at the entrance of LBTI, imposes dimensional constraints to the instrument, which had been kept very compact. The folded optical design includes more than 50 optical elements, among which 4 Off-Axis Parabolas, 1 Deformable Mirror for the compensation of the Non Common Path Aberrations from the FLAO Wavefront Sensor, 2 detectors and 3 different kinds of coronagraph: Gaussian Lyot, Shaped Pupil and Four Quadrant Pupil Mask. Most of these optics are located onto an optical bench 500 x 400 mm, which makes SHARK-NIR an extremely dense instrument. This, together with the presence of 4 off-axis parabolas and of coronagraphs, such as the Four Quadrant, poorly tolerant to misalignments, requires a careful alignment and test phase, which needs the fine adjustement of many hundreds of degrees of freedom. We will give here an overview of the opto-mechanical layout of SHARK-NIR and of the identified alignment procedure, mostly optical, planned to take place in 2018.

The Copernico Telescope testing facility for AO on-sky demonstrations

We present a new testing facility hosted at the Coude focus of the INAF-Padova Copernico Telescope, a project carried on within the ADaptive Optics National Italian laboratories - ADONI. A permanent laboratory for on-sky experimentation accessible to the AO community, with the aim of hosting visiting multi-purpose instrumentation that may be directly tested on sky. We will give an overview of the activities carried on, describing the refurbishment activities at the hosting structure that allowed the opening of the facility: the implementation of the opto-mechanical train down to the Coude focus, and the creation of the laboratory. This facility provides a powerful scientific and technical test bench for new instrumental concepts, which may eventually be incorporated later in the next generation ELTs telescopes.