Adaptive optics for the Thirty Meter Telescope
Abstract
Adaptive Optics (AO) will be essential for at least seven of the eight science instruments currently planned for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). These instruments include three near infra-red (NIR) imagers and spectrometers with fields of view from 2 to 30 arc seconds, a mid-IR echelle spectrometer, a planet formation imager/spectrometer, a wide field optical spectrograph, and a NIR multi-object spectrometer with multiple integral field units deployable over a 5 arc minute field of regard. In this paper we describe the overall AO reference design that supports these instruments, which consists of a facility AO system feeding the first three instruments and dedicated AO systems for the remaining four. Key design challenges for these systems include very high-order, large-stroke wavefront correction, tip-tilt sensing with faint natural guide stars to maximize sky coverage, laser guidestar wavefront sensing on a very large aperture, and achieving extremely high contrast ratios for the detection of extra-solar planets and other faint companions of bright stars. We describe design concepts for meeting these challenges and summarize our supporting plans for AO component development.
Additional Information
© 2005 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). This paper was prepared as part of the work of the Thirty- Meter Telescope (TMT) Project. TMT is a partnership of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA), the California Institute of Technology, and the University of California. The partners gratefully acknowledge the support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Research Council of Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Gemini Partnership. Portions of this research were performed under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract W-7405-ENG-48. The sodium layer measurements used in Fig. 2 were provided by Dr. Chiao-Yao (Joe) She of Colorado St. University. Roland Geyl of SAGEM and James Beletic at the Rockwell Science Center provided the figures appearing in Section 5.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 95581
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190517-160625720
- Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)
- Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA)
- Caltech
- University of California
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- NSF
- National Research Council of Canada
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Gemini Partnership
- W-7405-ENG-48
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- Created
-
2019-05-20Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Thirty Meter Telescope
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 5903