Conceptual design for a user-friendly adaptive optics system at Lick Observatory
In this paper, we present a conceptual design for a general-purpose adaptive optics system, usable with all Cassegrain facility instruments on the 3 meter Shane telescope at the University of California`s Lick Observatory located on Mt. Hamilton near San Jose, California. The overall design goal for this system is to take the sodium-layer laser guide star adaptive optics technology out of the demonstration stage and to build a user-friendly astronomical tool. The emphasis will be on ease of calibration, improved stability and operational simplicity in order to allow the system to be run routinely by observatory staff. A prototype adaptive optics system and a 20 watt sodium-layer laser guide star system have already been built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for use at Lick Observatory. The design presented in this paper is for a next- generation adaptive optics system that extends the capabilities of the prototype system into the visible with more degrees of freedom. When coupled with a laser guide star system that is upgraded to a power matching the new adaptive optics system, the combined system will produce diffraction-limited images for near-IR cameras. Atmospheric correction at wavelengths of 0.6-1 mm will significantly increase the throughput of the most heavily used facility instrument at Lick, the Kast Spectrograph, and will allow it to operate with smaller slit widths and deeper limiting magnitudes. 8 refs., 2 figs.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 443218
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-123528; CONF-9607118-2; ON: DE96050541
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: OSA/IEEE-LEOS/SPIE summer topical meeting on adaptive optics, international symposium on optical memory and optical data storage and topical meeting on nonlinear optics: materials, fundamentals and applications, Maui, HI (United States), 8-12 Jul 1996; Other Information: PBD: 8 Mar 1996
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
New optical design of adaptive optics system at Lick Observatory
Performance of laser guide star adaptive optics at Lick Observatory