Rise of the machines: first year operations of the Robo-AO visible-light laser-adaptive optics instrument

Christoph Baranec; Reed Riddle; Nicholas M. Law; A. N. Ramaprakash; Shriharsh Tendulkar; Kristina Hogstrom; Khanh Bui; Mahesh Burse; Pravin Chordia; Hillol Das; Richard Dekany; Shrinivas Kulkarni; Sujit Punnadi; Roger Smith

arXiv · 1309.4432

Rise of the machines: first year operations of the Robo-AO visible-light laser-adaptive optics instrument

Christoph Baranec·Reed Riddle·Nicholas M. Law·A. N. Ramaprakash·Shriharsh Tendulkar·Kristina Hogstrom·Khanh Bui·Mahesh Burse·Pravin Chordia·Hillol Das·Richard Dekany·Shrinivas Kulkarni·Sujit Punnadi·Roger Smith

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Abstract

Robo-AO is the first autonomous laser adaptive optics system and science instrument operating on sky. With minimal human oversight, the system robotically executes large scale surveys, monitors long-term astrophysical dynamics and characterizes newly discovered transients, all at the visible diffraction limit. The average target-to target operational overhead, including slew time, is a mere 86 s, enabling up to ~20 observations per hour. The first of many envisioned systems went live in June 2012, and has since finished 78 nights of science observing at the Palomar Observatory 60-inch (1.5 m) telescope, with over 9,000 robotic observations executed as of August 2013. The system will be augmented in 2014 with a low-noise wide field infrared camera, which will double as a tip-tilt sensor, to widen the spectral bandwidth of observations, increase available sky coverage as well as enable deeper visible imaging using adaptive-optics sharpened infrared tip-tilt guide sources.

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Christoph Baranec, Reed Riddle, Nicholas M. Law, A. N. Ramaprakash, Shriharsh Tendulkar, Kristina Hogstrom, Khanh Bui, Mahesh Burse, Pravin Chordia, Hillol Das, Richard Dekany, Shrinivas Kulkarni, Sujit Punnadi, Roger Smith. 2013-09-17. Rise of the machines: first year operations of the Robo-AO visible-light laser-adaptive optics instrument. https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4432

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