Jesper Storm

ARGOS - The laser guide star system for the LBT

ARGOS is the Laser Guide Star adaptive optics system for the Large Binocular Telescope. Aiming for a wide field adaptive optics correction, ARGOS will equip both sides of LBT with a multi laser beacon system and corresponding wavefront sensors, driving LBTs adaptive secondary mirrors. Utilizing high power pulsed green lasers the artificial beacons are generated via Rayleigh scattering in earths atmosphere. ARGOS will project a set of three guide stars above each of LBTs mirrors in a wide constellation. The returning scattered light, sensitive particular to the turbulence close to ground, is detected in a gated wavefront sensor system. Measuring and correcting the ground layers of the optical distortions enables ARGOS to achieve a correction over a very wide field of view. Taking advantage of this wide field correction, the science that can be done with the multi object spectrographs LUCIFER will be boosted by higher spatial resolution and strongly enhanced flux for spectroscopy. Apart from the wide field correction ARGOS delivers in its ground layer mode, we foresee a diffraction limited operation with a hybrid Sodium laser Rayleigh beacon combination.

Development of the first-light AO system for the large binocular telescope

The LBT Adaptive first light is foreseen for summer 2004. The first light AO system will be part of the Acquisition Guiding and Wavefront sensor unit (AGW) placed at the front bent Gregorian Foci of the telescope. The development and construction of the AO system is an undergoing process at Arcetri Observatory. The main features of the system are: the use of an adaptive secondary mirror with 672 actuators, the adoption of a pyramid wavefront sensor with a maximum sampling of 30x30 subaperture and the use of a small (400x320mm) movable wavefront sensor unit for reference star acquisition. After a brief description of the system the paper report about the progresses made in the design, realization and lab testing of the various parts of the AO system. In particular we describe the new beams configuration for the wavefront sensor board, the lab prototype of the sensor opto-mechanics, the sensor fast camera and its controller, the glass pyramid, the AO system real time and control software.

Status of the ARGOS project

ARGOS is the Laser Guide Star and Wavefront sensing facility for the Large Binocular Telescope. With first laser light on sky in 2013, the system is currently undergoing commissioning at the telescope. We present the overall status and design, as well as first results on sky. Aiming for a wide field ground layer correction, ARGOS is designed as a multi- Rayleigh beacon adaptive optics system. A total of six powerful pulsed lasers are creating the laser guide stars in constellations above each of the LBTs primary mirrors. With a range gated detection in the wavefront sensors, and the adaptive correction by the deformable secondary’s, we expect ARGOS to enhance the image quality over a large range of seeing conditions. With the two wide field imaging and spectroscopic instruments LUCI1 and LUCI2 as receivers, a wide range of scientific programs will benefit from ARGOS. With an increased resolution, higher encircled energy, both imaging and MOS spectroscopy will be boosted in signal to noise by a large amount. Apart from the wide field correction ARGOS delivers in its ground layer mode, we already foresee the implementation of a hybrid Sodium with Rayleigh beacon combination for a diffraction limited AO performance.

Integration and test of the first light AO system for LBT

The paper describes the single conjugate AO system called WLBT to be mounted at LBT in late summer 2004. The WLBT is part of the Acquisition, Guiding & Wavefront sensing unit (AGW) attached to the front bent Gregorian foci derotator. The two key features of this system are the use of a pyramid wavefront sensor with variable sampling between 30x30 and 5x5 sub apertures plus the use of an adaptive secondary mirror having 672 actuators as wavefront corrector. The AO system is mainly working as atmospheric disturbance correction system in the near infrared (J,H and K band). However due to the large number of actuators and sub apertures, it can obtain good performance even in R and I band. The paper reports about development and integration of the system final unit in the lab. Then some initial tests aimed to do a system characterization are reported. The results we obtained are used to give an estimation of the performance that the system can reach at the telescope in terms of limiting magnitude.

First Light Adaptive Optics System for Large Binocular Telescope

The paper describes the design of the single conjugate Adaptive Optics system to be installed on the LBT telescope. This system will be located in the Acquisition, Guiding and Wavefront sensor unit (AGW) mounted at the front bent Gregorian focus of LBT. Two innovative key features of this system are the Adaptive Secondary Mirror and the Pyramid Wavefront Sensor. The secondary provides 672 actuators wavefront correction available at the various foci of LBT. Due to the adaptive secondary mirror there is no need to optically conjugate the pupil on the deformable mirror. This allows having a very short sensor optical path made up using small dimension refractive optics. The overall AO system has a transmission of 70 % and fits in a rectangle of about 400×320mm. The pyramid sensor allows having different pupil sampling using on-chip binning of the detector. Main pupil samplings for the LBT system are 30×30, 15×15 and 10×10. Reference star acquisition is obtained moving the wavefront sensor unit in a field of view of 3×2 arcmin. Computer simulations of the overall system performance show the good correction achievable in J, H, and K. In particular, in our configuration, the limiting magnitude of pyramid sensor results more than one magnitude fainter with respect to Shack- Hartmann sensor. This feature directly translates in an increased sky coverage that is, in K band, about doubled with respect to the same AO system using a Shack-Hartmann sensor.

ARGOS wavefront sensing: from detection to correction

Argos is the ground-layer adaptive optics system for the Large Binocular Telescope. In order to perform its wide-field correction, Argos uses three laser guide stars which sample the atmospheric turbulence. To perform the correction, Argos has at disposal three different wavefront sensing measurements : its three laser guide stars, a NGS tip-tilt, and a third wavefront sensor. We present the wavefront sensing architecture and its individual components, in particular: the finalized Argos pnCCD camera detecting the 3 laser guide stars at 1kHz, high quantum efficiency and 4e- noise; the Argos tip-tilt sensor based on a quad-cell avalanche photo-diodes; and the Argos wavefront computer. Being in the middle of the commissioning, we present the first wavefront sensing configurations and operations performed at LBT, and discuss further improvements in the measurements of the 3 laser guide star slopes as detected by the pnCCD.

First Results of the Ground Layer Adaptive Optics System ARGOS - eScholarship

We present the first results of Argos, the multiple laser guide star and wavefront sensing facility for the Large Binocular Telescope. This system will deliver an improvement by a factor of two in FWHM over the 4′×4′ field of view of both Luci instruments. Luci 1 and Luci 2 are two near-infrared wide field imagers and multi-object spectrographs which capability and efficiency will be boosted by the increased resolution and encircled energy.The first on-sky ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO) loop closure with Argos has been achieved in Fall 2014 on the right eye of the telescope. Stable operations in closed-loop have been demonstrated in May 2015 with hour-long integration and repeated good performances over several nights. Since then, the commissioning has been proceeding with the installation of the left system and the beginning of the left on-sky operations in this Fall 2015. The next achievements will be to strengthen the operational aspects and to perform science demonstration in both imaging and spectroscopic modes. We first present the current status of the project and review the operational aspects. Then, we analyze the first combined Luci and Argos observations and discuss the performances and the gains provided by Argos in term of scientific capabilities.

Status report on the Large Binocular Telescope's ARGOS ground-layer AO system

ARGOS, the laser-guided adaptive optics system for the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), is now under construction at the telescope. By correcting atmospheric turbulence close to the telescope, the system is designed to deliver high resolution near infrared images over a field of 4 arc minute diameter. Each side of the LBT is being equipped with three Rayleigh laser guide stars derived from six 18 W pulsed green lasers and projected into two triangular constellations matching the size of the corrected field. The returning light is to be detected by wavefront sensors that are range gated within the seeing-limited depth of focus of the telescope. Wavefront correction will be introduced by the telescopes deformable secondary mirrors driven on the basis of the average wavefront errors computed from the respective guide star constellation. Measured atmospheric turbulence profiles from the site lead us to expect that by compensating the ground-layer turbulence, ARGOS will deliver median image quality of about 0.2 arc sec across the JHK bands. This will be exploited by a pair of multi-object near-IR spectrographs, LUCIFER1 and LUCIFER2, with 4 arc minute field already operating on the telescope. In future, ARGOS will also feed two interferometric imaging instruments, the LBT Interferometer operating in the thermal infrared, and LINC-NIRVANA, operating at visible and near infrared wavelengths. Together, these instruments will offer very broad spectral coverage at the diffraction limit of the LBTs combined aperture, 23 m in size.

Wavefront sensing and guiding units for the Large Binocular Telescope

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) will see first light with a single primary mirror in January 2003. It will be equipped with fully adaptive secondary mirrors from the beginning as well as a complete on-axis wavefront sensing and tip-tilt guiding system. Here we present the preliminary design of the Acquisition, Guiding, and Wavefront sensing system for the LBT. The system is divided in an off-axis system for target acquisition, guiding, and slow wavefront sensing, and an on- axis system for rapid wavefront sensing and tip-tilt guiding. The on-axis system operates on the optical light reflected off a tilted entrance window for the instrument science camera. In this way both the correction to the wavefront (done with the secondary mirrors) and the wavefront sensing (done on the light reflected off the dewar entrance windows) is performed without introducing a single additional optical surface in the science beam. In this way the design follows the lead of the upgraded MMT system. However, the present design differs from the MMT design, in that it does tip-tilt sensing in addition to the rapid wavefront sensing. To enable the system to use a tip-tilt guiding star up to 1 arcmin away from the science target, a significantly larger field of view is required for the on-axis system. The off-axis part of the system can do classical guiding and slow wavefront sensing in parallel which will enable the control system to maintain the optimum setting of the optical system during observations. It will also include a high resolution wavefront sensing mode which will allow quick and detailed checks of the secondary mirrors.

Performance and results from the commissioning of the first acquisition, guiding, and wavefront sensing units for the Large Binocular Telescope

We present the results from the commisioning of the first three off-axis Acquisition, Guiding and Wavefront Sensing Units on the Large Binocular Telescope. In particular we report on the performance of the units with respect to image quality, optical efficiency and scattered light. We also present the procedure for calibrating the stage coordinate system astrometrically to the focal plane coordinates of the telescope as well as the positional performance of the system. The first of a total of four units was mounted on the telescope in October 2007 and in the mean time three units have been mounted on the telescope. The units have been used for commisioning of the focal stations as well as for scientific observations since the end of 2008 with LUCIFER-I, the near-IR images and MOS spectrograph