James Osborn

Stereo-SCIDAR : optical turbulence profiling with high sensitivity using a modified SCIDAR instrument.

The next generation of adaptive optics systems will require tomographic reconstruction techniques to map the optical refractive index fluctuations, generated by the atmospheric turbulence, along the line of sight to the astronomical target. These systems can be enhanced with data from an external atmospheric profiler. This is important for Extremely Large Telescope scale tomography. Here we propose a new instrument which utilizes the generalized Scintillation Detection And Ranging (SCIDAR) technique to allow high sensitivity vertical profiles of the atmospheric optical turbulence and wind velocity profile above astronomical observatories. The new approach, which we refer to as ‘stereo-SCIDAR’, uses a stereoscopic system with the scintillation pattern from each star of a double-star target incident on a separate detector. Separating the pupil images for each star has several advantages including increased magnitude difference tolerance for the target stars; negating the need for re-calibration due to the normalization errors usually associated with SCIDAR; an increase of at least a factor of 2 in the signal-to-noise ratio of the cross-covariance function and hence the profile for equal magnitude target stars and up to a factor of 16 improvement for targets of 3 mag difference and easier real-time reconstruction of the wind-velocity profile. Theoretical response functions are calculated for the instrument, and the performance is investigated using a Monte Carlo simulation. The technique is demonstrated using data recorded at the 2.5-m Nordic Optical Telescope and the 1.0-m Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, both on La Palma.

Atmospheric turbulence profiling using multiple laser star wavefront sensors

This paper describes the data pre-processing and reduction methods together with SLOpe Detection And Ranging (SLODAR) analysis and wind profiling techniques for the Gemini South Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS). The wavefront gradient measurements of the five GeMS Shack–Hartmann sensors, each pointing to a laser guide star, are combined with the deformable mirror (DM) commands sent to three DMs optically conjugated at 0, 4.5 and 9 km in order to reconstruct pseudo-open loop slopes. These pseudo-open loop slopes are then used to reconstruct atmospheric turbulence profiles, based on the SLODAR and wind-profiling methods. We introduce the SLODAR method, and how it has been adapted to work in a closed-loop, multi-laser guide star system. We show that our method allows characterizing the turbulence of up to 16 layers for altitudes spanning from 0 to 19 km. The data pre-processing and reduction methods are described, and results obtained from observations made in 2011 are presented. The wind profiling analysis is shown to be a powerful technique not only for characterizing the turbulence intensity, wind direction and speed, but also as it can provide a verification tool for SLODAR results. Finally, problems such as the fratricide effect in multiple laser systems due to Rayleigh scattering, centroid gain variations, and limitations of the method are also addressed.

Open-loop tomography with artificial neural networks on CANARY: on-sky results

We present recent results from the initial testing of an artificial neural network (ANN)-based tomographic reconstructor Complex Atmospheric Reconstructor based on Machine lEarNing (CARMEN) on CANARY, an adaptive optics demonstrator operated on the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope, La Palma. The reconstructor was compared with contemporaneous data using the Learn and Apply (L&A) tomographic reconstructor. We find that the fully optimized L&A tomographic reconstructor outperforms CARMEN by approximately 5percent in Strehl ratio or 15nm rms in wavefront error. We also present results for CANARY in Ground Layer Adaptive Optics mode to show that the reconstructors are tomographic. The results are comparable and this small deficit is attributed to limitations in the training data used to build the ANN. Laboratory bench tests show that the ANN can outperform L&A under certain conditions, e.g. if the higher layer of a model two layer atmosphere was to change in altitude by ∼300m (equivalent to a shift of approximately one tenth of a subaperture).

Using artificial neural networks for open-loop tomography

Modern adaptive optics (AO) systems for large telescopes require tomographic techniques to reconstruct the phase aberrations induced by the turbulent atmosphere along a line of sight to a target which is angularly separated from the guide sources that are used to sample the atmosphere. Multi-object adaptive optics (MOAO) is one such technique. Here, we present a method which uses an artificial neural network (ANN) to reconstruct the target phase given off-axis references sources. We compare our ANN method with a standard least squares type matrix multiplication method and to the learn and apply method developed for the CANARY MOAO instrument. The ANN is trained with a large range of possible turbulent layer positions and therefore does not require any input of the optical turbulence profile. It is therefore less susceptible to changing conditions than some existing methods. We also exploit the non-linear response of the ANN to make it more robust to noisy centroid measurements than other linear techniques.

Experience with wavefront sensor and deformable mirror interfaces for wide-field adaptive optics systems

Recent advances in adaptive optics (AO) have led to the implementation of wide field-of-view AO systems. A number of wide-field AO systems are also planned for the forthcoming Extremely Large Telescopes. Such systems have multiple wavefront sensors of different types, and usually multiple deformable mirrors (DMs). Here, we report on our experience integrating cameras and DMs with the real-time control systems of two wide-field AO systems. These are CANARY, which has been operating on-sky since 2010, and DRAGON, which is a laboratory AO real-time demonstrator instrument. We detail the issues and difficulties that arose, along with the solutions we developed. We also provide recommendations for consideration when developing future wide-field AO systems.

Comparison of vibration mitigation controllers for adaptive optics systems.

Vibrations are detrimental to the performance of modern adaptive optics (AO) systems. In this paper, we describe new methods tested to mitigate the vibrations encountered in some of the instruments of the Gemini South telescope. By implementing a spectral analysis of the slope measurements from several wavefront sensors and an imager, we can determine the frequencies and magnitude of these vibrations. We found a persistent vibration at 55 Hz with others occurring occasionally at 14 and 100 Hz. Two types of AO controllers were designed and implemented, Kalman and H∞, in the multiconjugate AO tip-tilt loop. The first results show a similar performance for these advanced controllers and a clear improvement in vibration rejection and overall performance over the classical integrator scheme. It is shown that the reduction in the standard deviation of the residual slopes (as measured by wavefront sensors) is highly dependent on turbulence, wind speed, and vibration conditions, ranging--in terms of slopes RMS value--from an almost negligible reduction for high speed wind to a factor of 5 for a combination of low wind and strong vibrations.

An ANN-Based Smart Tomographic Reconstructor in a Dynamic Environment

In astronomy, the light emitted by an object travels through the vacuum of space and then the turbulent atmosphere before arriving at a ground based telescope. By passing through the atmosphere a series of turbulent layers modify the lights wave-front in such a way that Adaptive Optics reconstruction techniques are needed to improve the image quality. A novel reconstruction technique based in Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) is proposed. The network is designed to use the local tilts of the wave-front measured by a Shack Hartmann Wave-front Sensor (SHWFS) as inputs and estimate the turbulence in terms of Zernike coefficients. The ANN used is a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) trained with simulated data with one turbulent layer changing in altitude. The reconstructor was tested using three different atmospheric profiles and compared with two existing reconstruction techniques: Least Squares type Matrix Vector Multiplication (LS) and Learn and Apply (L + A).

Atmospheric scintillation in astronomical photometry

Scintillation noise due to the Earths turbulent atmosphere can be a dominant noise source in high-precision astronomical photometry when observing bright targets from the ground. Here we describe the phenomenon of scintillation from its physical origins to its effect on photometry. We show that Youngs scintillation-noise approximation used by many astronomers tends to underestimate the median scintillation noise at several major observatories around the world. We show that using median atmospheric optical turbulence profiles, which are now available for most sites, provides a better estimate of the expected scintillation noise and that real-time turbulence profiles can be used to precisely characterize the scintillation-noise component of contemporaneous photometric measurements. This will enable a better understanding and calibration of photometric noise sources and the effectiveness of scintillation correction techniques. We also provide new equations for calculating scintillation noise, including for extremely large telescopes where the scintillation noise will actually be lower than previously thought. These equations highlight the fact that scintillation noise and shot noise have the same dependence on exposure time and so if an observation is scintillation limited, it will be scintillation limited for all exposure times. The ratio of scintillation noise to shot noise is also only weakly dependent on telescope diameter and so a bigger telescope may not yield a reduction in fractional scintillation noise.

Conjugate-plane photometry : reducing scintillation in ground-based photometry.

High-precision fast photometry from ground-based observatories is a challenge due to intensity fluctuations (scintillation) produced by the Earths atmosphere. Here we describe a method to reduce the effects of scintillation by a combination of pupil reconjugation and calibration using a comparison star. Because scintillation is produced by high-altitude turbulence, the range of angles over which the scintillation is correlated is small and therefore simple correction by a comparison star is normally impossible. We propose reconjugating the telescope pupil to a high dominant layer of turbulence, then apodizing it before calibration with a comparison star. We find by simulation that given a simple atmosphere with a single high-altitude turbulent layer and a strong surface layer, a reduction in the intensity variance by a factor of ∼30 is possible. Given a more realistic atmosphere as measured by Scintillation Detection and Ranging (SCIDAR) at San Pedro Martir, we find that on a night with a strong high-altitude layer we can expect the median variance to be reduced by a factor of ∼11. By reducing the scintillation noise we will be able to detect much smaller changes in brightness. If we assume a 2-m telescope and an exposure time of 30 s, a reduction in the scintillation noise from 0.78 to 0.21 mmag is possible, which will enable the routine detection of, for example, the secondary transits of extrasolar planets from the ground.

PSF halo reduction in adaptive optics using dynamic pupil masking.

We describe a method to reduce residual speckles in an adaptive optics system which add to the halo of the point spread function (PSF). The halo is particularly problematic in astronomical applications involving the detection of faint companions. Areas of the pupil are selected where the residual wavefront aberrations are large and these are masked using a spatial light modulator. The method is also suitable for smaller telescopes without adaptive optics as a relatively simple method to increase the resolution of the telescope. We describe the principle of the technique and show simulation results.