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The Next Generation Adaptive Optics (NGAO) system will represent a considerable advancement for high resolution astronomical imaging and spectroscopy at the W. M. Keck Observatory. The AO system will incorporate multiple laser guidestar tomography to increase the corrected field of view and remove the cone effect inherent to single laser guide star systems. The improvement will permit higher Strehl correction in the near-infrared and diffraction-limited correction down to R band. A high actuator count micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) deformable mirror will provide the on-axis wavefront correction to a number of instrument stations and additional MEMS devices will feed multiple channels of a deployable integral-field spectrograph. In this paper we present the status of the AO system design and describe its various operating modes.

A laser guide star (LGS) adaptive optics (AO) system generally requires additional tip/tilt information derived using a natural guide star (NGS), while multi-LGS systems will benefit from measurement of additional low-order wavefront modes using one or more NGS's. If we use AO sharpened NGS's, we can improve both the measurement accuracy and accessible sky fraction while also minimizing the observational overhead of faint NGS acquisition. Multi-object adaptive optics (MOAO) sharpening of NGS is possible where a good estimate of the NGS wavefront can be made, for example where tomographic wavefront information is available. We describe a new approach for high Strehl ratio sharpening, based on additional patrolling laser beacons, to eliminate generalized anisoplanatism and minimize tomography error in the NGS direction.

The Moderate Order Radial (MOR) Truth Wavefront Sensor (TWFS) of NFIRAOS, the facility AO system for TMT, is a visible light order 12x12 subaperture Shack-Hartmann WFS. Its role is to sense radial wavefront errors arising from variations in the Sodium layer profile that are not sensed by the on-instrument near infrared tip-tilt focus wavefront sensor at a sampling frequency on the order of one Herz. It works in concert with the High Order Low bandwidth (HOL) TWFS, which will use a 120x120 subaperture Shack-Hartmann WFS that senses slow variations in telescope flexure and the rotation of the pupil. Top-level requirements for NFIRAOS leave little margin for degradation in sky coverage or additional implementation wavefront errors introduced by the operation of the MOR TWFS. In this paper, we explore MOR TWFS design trade studies on the number of subapertures, sampling rate, the width of the MOR TWFS visible bandpass, and the split in light between the MOR and HOL TWFS, and present a design for a system which meets the top level requirements by not degrading the high sky coverage of NFIRAOS (50% sky coverage at the Galactic poles) and rejecting the radial modes with a residual wavefront error of 10nm.

Atmospheric turbulence compensation via adaptive optics (AO) will be essential for achieving most objectives of the TMT science case. The performance requirements for the initial implementation of the observatory's facility AO system include diffraction-limited performance in the near IR with 50 per cent sky coverage at the galactic pole. This capability will be achieved via an order 60x60 multi-conjugate AO system (NFIRAOS) with two deformable mirrors optically conjugate to ranges of 0 and 12 km, six high-order wavefront sensors observing laser guide stars in the mesospheric sodium layer, and up to three low-order, IR, natural guide star wavefront sensors located within each client instrument. The associated laser guide star facility (LGSF) will consist of 3 50W class, solid state, sum frequency lasers, conventional beam transport optics, and a launch telescope located behind the TMT secondary mirror. In this paper, we report on the progress made in designing, modeling, and validating these systems and their components over the last two years. This includes work on the overall layout and detailed opto-mechanical designs of NFIRAOS and the LGSF; reliable wavefront sensing methods for use with elongated and time-varying sodium laser guide stars; developing and validating a robust tip/tilt control architecture and its components; computationally efficient algorithms for very high order wavefront control; detailed AO system modeling and performance optimization incorporating all of these effects; and a range of supporting lab/field tests and component prototyping activities at TMT partners. Further details may be found in the additional papers on each of the above topics.

A multi-laser adaptive optics system, at the 6.5 m MMT telescope, has been undergoing commissioning in preparation for wide-field, partially corrected as well as narrow-field, diffraction limited science observations in the thermal and near infrared. After several delays due to bad weather, we have successfully closed the full high order ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO) control loop for the first time in February 2008 using five Rayleigh laser guide stars and a single tilt star. Characterization and automated correction of static aberrations such as non-common path errors were addressed in May 2008. Calibration measurements in preparation for laser tomography adaptive optics (LTAO) operation are planned for the fall of 2008 along with the start of shared-risk GLAO science observations. We present the results of GLAO observations with the PISCES imager, a 1 - 2.5 µm camera with a field of view of 110 arc seconds. The status of the remaining GLAO commissioning work is also reviewed. Finally, we present plans for commissioning work to implement the LTAO operating mode of the system.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will implement a first light facility Laser Guide Star Multi Conjugate Adaptive Optics System, NFIRAOS, which will feed three science instruments on the telescope Nasmyth platform. This system will include two deformable mirrors, six laser guide star wavefront sensors, and multiple tip/tilt/focus wavefront sensors located in the instruments. The Real Time Controller (RTC) is one of the most innovative and essential components of this first light AO system. In this paper, we provide an update on the NFIRAOS RTC overall requirements and challenges, and in particular, on the tomography and fitting wavefront reconstruction algorithms. Several implementations of a minimum variance reconstructor are presented together with their processing and memory requirements.

We have analyzed the application of frame selection ("lucky imaging") to adaptive optics (AO), short-exposure observations of faint companions. We have used the instantaneous Strehl ratio as an image quality metric. The probability density function (PDF) of this quantity can be used to determine the outcome of frame selection in terms of optimizing the Strehl ratio and the peak-signal-to-noise-ratio of the shift-and-add image. In the presence of static speckles, frame selection can lead to both: improvement in resolution--as quantified by the Strehl ratio, as well as faint signal detectability--given by the peak-signal-to-noise-ratio. This theoretical prediction is confirmed with real data from AO observations using Lick Observatory's 3m Shane telescope, and the Palomar Observatory's 5m Hale telescope. In addition, we propose a novel statistics-based technique for the detection of faint companions from a sequence of AO-corrected exposures. The algorithm, which we call stochastic speckle discrimination, utilizes the "statistical signature" of the centre of the point spread function (PSF) to discriminate between faint companions and static speckles. The technique yields excellent results even for signals invisible in the shift-and-add images.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will implement a Laser Guide Star Facility (LGSF), which will generate up to nine Na laser beams in at least four distinct asterisms. The TMT LGSF conceptual design is based upon three 50W solid state, continuous wave, sum frequency 589 nm lasers and conventional beam transport optics. In this paper, we provide an update to the TMT LGSF conceptual design. The LGSF top end and the beam transfer optics have been significantly redesigned to compensate for the TMT telescope top end flexure, to adapt for the new TMT Ritchey-Chretien optical design, to reduce the number of optical surfaces and to reduce the mass and volume. Finally, the laser service enclosure has been relocated within the telescope azimuth structure. This will permit the lasers to operate with a fixed gravity vector, but also requires further changes in the beam transport optical path.

Deployed as a multi-user shared facility on the 5.1 meter Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory, the PALM-3000 highorder upgrade to the successful Palomar Adaptive Optics System will deliver extreme AO correction in the near-infrared, and diffraction-limited images down to visible wavelengths, using both natural and sodium laser guide stars. Wavefront control will be provided by two deformable mirrors, a 3368 active actuator woofer and 349 active actuator tweeter, controlled at up to 3 kHz using an innovative wavefront processor based on a cluster of 17 graphics processing units. A Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with selectable pupil sampling will provide high-order wavefront sensing, while an infrared tip/tilt sensor and visible truth wavefront sensor will provide low-order LGS control. Four back-end instruments are planned at first light: the PHARO near-infrared camera/spectrograph, the SWIFT visible light integral field spectrograph, Project 1640, a near-infrared coronagraphic integral field spectrograph, and 888Cam, a high-resolution visible light imager.

We have recently demonstrated diffraction-limited resolution imaging in the visible on the 5m Palomar Hale telescope. The new LAMP instrument is a Lucky Imaging backend camera for the Palomar AO system. Typical resolutions of 35-40 mas with Strehls of 10-20% were achieved at 700nm, and at 500nm the FWHM resolution was as small as 42 milliarcseconds. In this paper we discuss the capabilities and design challenges of such a system used with current and near future AO systems on a variety of telescopes. In particular, we describe the designs of two planned Lucky Imaging + AO instruments: a facility instrument for the Palomar 200" AO system and its PALM3K upgrade, and a visible-light imager for the CAMERA low-cost LGS AO system planned for the Palomar 60" telescope. We introduce a Monte Carlo simulation setup that reproduces the observed PSF variability behind an adaptive optics system, and apply it to predict the performance of 888Cam and CAMERA. CAMERA is predicted to achieve diffraction-limited resolution at wavelengths as short as 350 nm. In addition to on-axis resolution improvements we discuss the results of frame selection with the aim of improving other image parameters such as isoplanatic patch sizes, showing that useful improvements in image quality can be made by Lucky+AO even with very temporally and spatially undersampled data.

The W. M. Keck Observatory is designing a new adaptive optics system providing precision AO correction in the near infrared, good correction at visible wavelengths, and multiplexed spatially resolved spectroscopy. We discuss science cases for this Next Generation AO (NGAO), and show how the system requirements were derived from these science cases. Key science drivers include asteroid companions, planets around low-mass stars, general relativistic effects around the Galactic Center black hole, nearby active galactic nuclei, and high-redshift galaxies (including galaxies lensed by intervening galaxies or clusters). The multi-object AO-corrected integral field spectrograph will be optimized for high-redshift galaxy science.

This paper describes the modeling effort undertaken to derive the wavefront error (WFE) budget for the Narrow Field Infrared Adaptive Optics System (NFIRAOS), which is the facility, laser guide star (LGS), dual-conjugate adaptive optics (AO) system for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). The budget describes the expected performance of NFIRAOS at zenith, and has been decomposed into (i) first-order turbulence compensation terms (120 nm on-axis), (ii) opto-mechanical implementation errors (84 nm), (iii) AO component errors and higher-order effects (74 nm) and (iv) tip/tilt (TT) wavefront errors at 50% sky coverage at the galactic pole (61 nm) with natural guide star (NGS) tip/tilt/focus/astigmatism (TTFA) sensing in J band. A contingency of about 66 nm now exists to meet the observatory requirement document (ORD) total on-axis wavefront error of 187 nm, mainly on account of reduced TT errors due to updated windshake modeling and a low read-noise NGS wavefront sensor (WFS) detector. A detailed breakdown of each of these top-level terms is presented, together with a discussion on its evaluation using a mix of high-order zonal and low-order modal Monte Carlo simulations.

We describe the work that has gone into taking the sodium Laser Guide Star (LGS) program on the Palomar AO system from a successful experiment to a facility instrument. In particular, we describe the operation of the system, the BTO (beam transfer optics) system which controls the path of the laser in the dome, the aircraft safety systems and the optical systems which allow us to take advantage of the unique properties of the macro/micro pulse laser. In addition we present on sky performance results that demonstrate K-band Strehl ratios of up to 48%

The detection and characterization of extrasolar planets with SPHERE (Spectro Polarimetric High contrast Exoplanet REsearch) is challenging and in particular relies on the ability of a coronagraph to attenuate the diffracted starlight. SPHERE includes 3 instruments, 2 of which can be operated simultaneously in the near IR from 0.95 to 1.8 microns. This requirements is extremely critical for coronagraphy. This paper briefly introduces the concepts of 2 coronagraphs, the Half-Wave Plate Four Quadrant Phase Masks and the Apodized Pupil Lyot Coronagraph, prototyped within the SPHERE consortium by LESIA (Observatory of Paris) and FIZEAU (University of Nice) respectively. Then, we present the measurements of contrast and sensitivity analysis. The comparison with technical specifications allows to validate the technology for manufacturing these coronagraphs., 10 pages, will be published in the proceeding of the SPIE conference Volume 7015 "Adaptive Optics", held in Marseille from 23 to 28 june 2008

We investigate the limits of ground-based astrometry with adaptive optics using the core of the Galactic globular cluster M5. Adaptive optics systems provide near diffraction-limit imaging with the world's largest telescopes. The substantial improvement in both resolution and signal-to-noise ratio enables high-precision astrometry from the ground. We describe the dominant systematic errors that typically limit ground-based differential astrometry, and enumerate observational considerations for mitigating their effects. After implementing these measures, we find that the dominant limitation on astrometric performance in this experiment is caused by tilt anisoplanatism. We then present an optimal estimation technique for measuring the position of one star relative to a grid of reference stars in the face of this correlated random noise source. Our methodology has the advantage of reducing the astrometric errors as the square root of time and faster than the square root of the number of reference stars -- effectively eliminating noise caused by atmospheric tilt to the point that astrometric performance is limited by centering accuracy. Using 50 reference stars we demonstrate single-epoch astrometric precision of ~ 1 mas in 1 second, decreasing to < 100 microarcseconds in 2 minutes of integration time at the Hale 200-inch telescope. We also show that our astrometry is accurate to, Comment: 32 pages, 12 figures; submitted to AJ