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Published July 21, 2014 | Published
Book Section - Chapter Open

KAPAO First Light: the design, construction and operation of a low-cost natural guide star adaptive optics system

Abstract

We present the instrument design and first light observations of KAPAO, a natural guide star adaptive optics (AO) system for the Pomona College Table Mountain Observatory (TMO) 1-meter telescope. The KAPAO system has dual science channels with visible and near-infrared cameras, a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor, and a commercially available 140-actuator MEMS deformable mirror. The pupil relays are two pairs of custom off-axis parabolas and the control system is based on a version of the Robo-AO control software. The AO system and telescope are remotely operable, and KAPAO is designed to share the Cassegrain focus with the existing TMO polarimeter. We discuss the extensive integration of undergraduate students in the program including the multiple senior theses/capstones and summer assistantships amongst our partner institutions. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0960343.

Additional Information

© 2014 SPIE. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0960343. Additional funding for aspects of this work were provided by the Pomona College Summer Undergraduate Research Program, the Rose Hills Foundation (PC student funding), the Newkirk student assistantship (SSU student funding) and the Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation which supported the SSU AO testbed. Further acknowledgement should be made to early work in MEMS AO by the Villages team led by Don Gavel at the UCO/Lick Observatory Laboratory for Adaptive Optics and for the early work on the CIT Camera project by Matthew Britton.

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