Xinlong Fan

INSTRUMENT DESCRIPTION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A HIGH-ORDER ADAPTIVE OPTICS SYSTEM FOR THE 1 m NEW VACUUM SOLAR TELESCOPE AT FUXIAN SOLAR OBSERVATORY

A high-order solar adaptive optics (AO) system including a fine tracking loop and a high-order wavefront correction loop has been installed at the 1 m New Vacuum Solar Telescope of the Fuxian Solar Observatory, in routine operation since 2016. The high-order wavefront correction loop consists of a deformable mirror with 151 actuators, a correlating Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with 102 subapertures of which the Absolute Difference Square Algorithm is used to extract the gradients, and a custom-built real-time controller based on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and multi-core Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The frame rate of the wavefront sensor is up to 3500 Hz and this is, to our knowledge, the fastest solar AO system. This AO system can work with a Fried parameter r(0), at the 500 nm wavelength, of larger than 3 cm. The first 65 modes of the Zernike aberrations can be efficiently corrected and the Strehl ratio of the corrected TiO image for the solar pore is superior to 0.75 with the Fried parameter r(0) larger than 10 cm. In this paper, the design of the system is described, and high-resolution solar observational images are presented. Furthermore, the performances of the AO system are evaluated according to the data recorded by the real-time controller.

Adaptive optical system based on deformable secondary mirror on 1.8-meter telescope

In 2009, A 127-element adaptive system had been manufactured and installed at the Coude room of the 1.8-meter telescope at the Gaomeigu site of Yunnan Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences. A set of new adaptive optical system based on a 73-element deformable secondary mirror is being developed and will be integrated into the 1.8-meter telescope. The 73-element deformable secondary mirror with convex reflecting surface is designed to be compatible with the Cassegrain focus of the 1.8-meter telescope. Comparing with the AO system of Coude focus, the AO system on the deformable secondary mirror adopts much less reflections and consequently restrains the thermal noise and increases the energy transmitting to the system. The design and simulation results of this system will be described in this paper. Furthermore, the preliminary test result of the deformable secondary mirror in the lab is also presented.

Solar adaptive optics for 1m new vacuum solar telescope

Adaptive Optics (AO) has become the requisite equipment of the ground-based large solar telescope to correct the wavefront aberration induced by the atmospheric turbulence. Two generation solar AO systems, one is the 37-element loworder AO system with 2100Hz frame rate and the other is 151-element high-order AO system with 3500Hz frame rate, were successfully developed in 2013 and 2015 respectively. In this presentation, the development of the two AO systems for 1-m New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST) at Fuxian Solar Observatory (FSO) will be introduced and the solar high resolution observational results are presented.

Piezoelectric deformable mirror technologies for astronomy at IOE, CAS

Institute of Optics & Electronics (IOE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has more than 30 years’ experience on piezoelectric deformable mirror (DM) technologies research and developing since early 1980s. Several DMs of IOE have been used in many different application systems. A brief history of piezoelectric DMs development in IOE and several recently achievements, and the main characters, performance and test results of the DMs for astronomy will be presented in this paper. 1) High-order DM. DM prototype with 913-element for 4m telescope has been fabricated and tested in laboratory. 2) Adaptive Secondary Mirror (ASM). A 73-element ASM prototype with 12 microns stroke for 1.8m telescope has been fabricated. It will be installed onto the 1.8m telescope with a compact adaptive optics (AO) system. 3) Small spacing DM. A 6mm spacing 127-element DM based on the same construction with the High-order DM has been used in AO system of 1m New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST) in Yunnan Observatories. Higher density (3mm spacing) DM based on a novel construction has being developed. In 2012, the novel DM prototype with 100-element was fabricated and tested carefully in laboratory. Beside, a 6mm spacing 151-element DM based on the novel construction has being fabricated for the solar AO system.

Testbed for an adaptive secondary mirror of 1.8m telescope

Testbed for an adaptive secondary mirror of 1.8m telescope is a system, which originates from Simpson-Oland-Meckel method. The testbed is composed of Hartmann-Shack (H-S) wavefront sensor, Hindle element and analysis element. Light from H-S wavefront sensor passes through the Hindle element and reflects off of the adaptive secondary mirror. It then is reflected by the concave surface of the Hindle element. After reflecting off of the adaptive secondary mirror again, it passes through the Hindle element and return to the H-S wavefront sensor. A beam splitter is placed between H-S wavefront sensor and Hindle element to reflect part of the output light to analysis element. The testbed is a low cost simple system that allows testing the convex hyperboloid adaptive secondary mirror. It also could be used to calibrate the adaptive secondary mirror as well as investigating higher performance control loops. Optical setup design, tolerance of fabrication, alignment and material asymmetry are presented in this paper.

Progress on solar multi-conjugate adaptive optics at the New Vacuum Solar Telescope

Multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) has been proved to obtain the high resolution images with a large field of view in solar observation. A solar MCAO experiment system had been successfully developed and tested at the 1-meter New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST) of Fuxian Solar Observatory. It consists of two deformable mirrors (DMs), a multidirection Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (MD-WFS), and a real-time controller. In order to command the two DMs, five guide regions were selected from the MD-WFS to retrieve a three-dimensional measurement of the turbulent volume based on atmospheric tomography. This system saw the first light in October, 2017, and a series of MCAO-corrected high resolution sunspots images were acquired. In this presentation, the MCAO experiment system is introduced, and the observation results are presented. Furthermore, a new MCAO system based on our proposed MCAO configuration with a high order ground layer adaptive optics and low order high altitude correction will be developed for the NVST as a regularly operating instrument for scientific observations of the sun.

Astronomical AO in Key Laboratory of Adaptive Optics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The AO progresses for astronomy in the Key Laboratory of Adaptive Optics, Chinese Academy of Sciences are reported in this presentation. For night-time astronomical observations, the recent AO technological developments, such as Laser Guide Star, Pyramid Sensor and Deformable Secondary Mirror, are introduced. The solar AO researches are also presented for day-time astronomical observations. Furthermore, we will show the on-sky high resolution observational results in the 1.8m telescope at Gaomeigu site, Yunnan Observatory and the 1-m New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST) at Fuxian Lake Solar Observatory respectively.

First light of the deformable secondary mirror-based adaptive optics system on 1.8m telescope

An adaptive optics system (AOS), which consists of a 73-element piezoelectric deformable secondary mirror (DSM), a 9x9 Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor and a real time controller has been integrated on the 1.8m telescope at the Gaomeigu site of Yunnan Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Compared to the traditional AOS on Coude focus, the DSM AOS adopts much less reflections and consequently restrains the thermal noise and increases the energy transmitting to the system. Before the first on-sky test, this system has been demonstrated in the laboratory by compensating the simulated atmospheric turbulence generated by a rotating phase screen. A new multichannel-modulation calibration method which is used to measure the DSM based AOS interaction matrix is proposed. After integration on the 1.8m telescope, the closed-loop compensation of the atmospheric turbulence with the DSM based AOS is achieved, and the first light results from the on-sky experiment are reported.

Test of a prototype of lightweight, active mirrors

Lightweight mirrors have been used widely in ground-based imaging systems and astronomical telescopes, because of their light weight and good stiffness. However, space telescope mirrors cannot maintain their initial surface shape due to the effects such as gravity release, thermal changes in the space and so on. To deal with the problem, a new type of lightweight, active primary mirrors which are rib-stiffened and contain surface-parallel actuators embedded in the recess of the ribs, are designed for potentially using in space-based imaging systems. They enable larger primary aperture to improve resolution and sensitivity and are capable of on-orbit surface shape correction, which can control the shape of the mirrors to optical tolerances. According to the previous optimized parameters a prototype of lightweight, active mirrors is fabricated and tested. The influence functions of the fabricated prototype are measured by using a Veeco interferometer and the correctability for the Zernike aberrations is simulated. The results show that it has a good fitting ability for low order Zernike aberrations.