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arXiv · 1408.4406

NFIRAOS First Facility AO System for the Thirty Meter Telescope

Glen Herriot·David Andersen·Jenny Atwood·Corinne Boyer·Peter Byrnes·Kris Caputa·Brent Ellerbroek·Luc Gilles·Alexis Hill·Zoran Ljusic·John Pazder·Matthias Rosensteiner·Malcolm Smith·Paolo Spano·Kei Szeto·Jean-Pierre Véran·Ivan Wevers·Lianqi Wang·Robert Wooff
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Abstract

NFIRAOS, the Thirty Meter Telescope's first adaptive optics system is an order 60x60 Multi-Conjugate AO system with two deformable mirrors. Although most observing will use 6 laser guide stars, it also has an NGS-only mode. Uniquely, NFIRAOS is cooled to -30 C to reduce thermal background. NFIRAOS delivers a 2-arcminute beam to three client instruments, and relies on up to three IR WFSs in each instrument. We present recent work including: robust automated acquisition on these IR WFSs; trade-off studies for a common-size of deformable mirror; real-time computing architectures; simplified designs for high-order NGS-mode wavefront sensing; modest upgrade concepts for high-contrast imaging.

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Glen Herriot, David Andersen, Jenny Atwood, Corinne Boyer, Peter Byrnes, Kris Caputa, Brent Ellerbroek, Luc Gilles, Alexis Hill, Zoran Ljusic, John Pazder, Matthias Rosensteiner, Malcolm Smith, Paolo Spano, Kei Szeto, Jean-Pierre Véran, Ivan Wevers, Lianqi Wang, Robert Wooff. 2014-08-19. NFIRAOS First Facility AO System for the Thirty Meter Telescope. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2055525

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