Improved Image Quality over 10′ Fields with the ʻImaka Ground-layer Adaptive Optics Experiment
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: ʻImaka is a ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO) demonstrator on the University of Hawaii 2.2 m telescope with a 24′ × 18′ field of view, nearly an order of magnitude larger than previous AO instruments. In 15 nights of observing with natural guide star asterisms ∼16′ in diameter, we measure median AO-off and AO-on empirical FWHMs of 0.″95 and 0.″64 in R band, 0.″81 and 0.″48 in I band, and 0.″76 and 0.″44 at 1 μm. This factor of 1.5–1.7 reduction in the size of the point-spread function (PSF) results from correcting both the atmosphere and telescope tracking errors. The AO-on PSF is uniform out to field positions ∼5′ off-axis, with a typical standard deviation in the FWHM of 0.″018. Images exhibit variation in FWMM by 4.5% across the field, which has been applied as a correction to the aforementioned quantities. The AO-on PSF is also 10× more stable in time compared to the AO-off PSF. In comparing the delivered image quality to proxy measurements, we find that in both AO-off and AO-on data delivered image quality is correlated with ʻImaka’s telemetry, with R-band correlation coefficients of 0.68 and 0.70, respectively. At the same wavelength, the data are correlated to DIMM and MASS seeing with coefficients of 0.45 and 0.55, respectively. Our results are an essential first step to implementing facility-class, wide-field GLAO on Maunakea telescopes, enabling new opportunities to study extended astronomical sources, such as deep galaxy fields, nearby galaxies, or star clusters, at high angular resolution.
Source: The Astronomical Journal
Authors: F. N. Abdurrahman, J. R. Lu, M. Chun, M. W. Service, O. Lai, D. Föhring, D. Toomey, C. Baranec
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2837570683