MRI: Development of a Fast and Flexible Adaptive Optics Controller

California Association For Research In Astronomy, Kamuela HI

Investigators

Abstract

This Major Research Instrumentation award will support a significant upgrade to Adaptive Optics [AO] system on the 10 meter Keck II telescope in Hawaii. Keck Observatory pioneered a new era of ground-based astronomy with a natural guide star system in 1999 and was last upgraded - to a laser guide star system - in 2007. Adaptive optics allows ground-based telescopes to overcome distortions induced by Earth's atmosphere and thereby achieve nearly the same spatial resolution as a space-based telescope of similar size. The upgraded Keck II AO system will enable a wide range of scientific studies and could serve as a springboard for future advanced AO instrumentation within the larger astronomical community. Keck Observatory provides telescope access to the astronomical community through an open-access agreement and through extensive collaborations with astronomers at their partner institutions. It plays a major role in training the next generation of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and they participate with other observatories in Hawaii in the Akamai workforce initiative, which provides scientific and technical internship opportunities to native Hawaiians. The upgrade will include modern wave front sensor camera and a faster real-time controller computer. This proposal builds on considerable related progress with the Keck AO systems, which will have an even larger impact with the bandwidth improvement. These include the implementation of a sodium- wavelength fiber laser and the launch of this laser from behind the Keck telescope secondary mirror (to reduce perspective elongation), and the current implementations of a near-infrared pyramid wavefront sensor and an AO-fed single mode fiber feed to NIRSPEC (to support exoplanet detection and characterization). The new hardware will provide a 1 magnitude sensitivity gain and allow the telescope to perform near its diffraction limit.