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Register a new userThe calibration procedure of the LINC-NIRVANA ground and high layer WFS
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Added by
Carmelo Arcidiacono
Publication date
2018
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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LINC--NIRVANA (LN) is an MCAO module currently mounted on the Rear Bent Gregorian focus of the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). It mounts a camera originally designed to realize the interferometric imaging focal station of the telescopes. LN follows the LBT binocular strategy having two twin channels: a double Layer Oriented Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics system assisting the two arms, supplies high order wave-front correction. In order to counterbalance the field rotation, a mechanical derotation is applied for the two ground wave-front sensors, and an optical (K-mirror) one for the two high layers sensors, fixing the positions of the focal planes with respect to the pyramids aboard the wavefront sensors. The derotation introduces a pupil images rotation on the wavefront sensors, changing the projection of the deformable mirrors on the sensor consequently.
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We present descriptions of the alignment and calibration tests of the Pathfinder, which achieved first light during our 2013 commissioning campaign at the LBT. The full LINC-NIRVANA instrument is a Fizeau interferometric imager with fringe tracking and 2-layer natural guide star multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) systems on each eye of the LBT. The MCAO correction for each side is achieved using a ground layer wavefront sensor that drives the LBT adaptive secondary mirror and a mid-high layer wavefront sensor that drives a Xinetics 349 actuator DM conjugated to an altitude of 7.1 km. When the LINC-NIRVANA MCAO system is commissioned, it will be one of only two such systems on an 8-meter telescope and the only such system in the northern hemisphere. In order to mitigate risk, we take a modular approach to commissioning by decoupling and testing the LINC-NIRVANA subsystems individually. The Pathfinder is the ground-layer wavefront sensor for the DX eye of the LBT. It uses 12 pyramid wavefront sensors to optically co-add light from natural guide stars in order to make four pupil images that sense ground layer turbulence. Pathfinder is now the first LINC-NIRVANA subsystem to be fully integrated with the telescope and commissioned on sky. Our 2013 commissioning campaign consisted of 7 runs at the LBT with the tasks of assembly, integration and communication with the LBT telescope control system, alignment to the telescope optical axis, off-sky closed loop AO calibration, and finally closed loop on-sky AO. We present the programmatics of this campaign, along with the novel designs of our alignment scheme and our off-sky calibration test, which lead to the Pathfinders first on-sky closed loop images.
The full LINC-NIRVANA instrument will be one of the most complex ground-based astronomical systems ever built. It will consist of multiple subsystems, including two multi-conjugate ground layer AO systems (MCAO) that drive the LBT adaptive secondaries, two mid-high layer AO systems with their own Xynetics 349 actuator DMs , a fringe tracker, a beam combiner, and the NIR science camera. In order to mitigate risk, we take a modular approach to instrument testing and commissioning by decoupling these subsystems individually. The first subsystem tested on-sky will be one of the ground-layer AO systems, part of a test-bed known as the Pathfinder. The Pathfinder consists of a 12-star pyramid wavefront sensor (PWFS) that drives one of the LBTs adaptive secondaries, a support structure known as The Foot, and the infrared test camera (IRTC), which is used for acquisition and alignment. The 12 natural guide stars are acquired by moveable arms called star enlargers, each of which contains its own optical path. The Pathfinder was shipped from MPIA in Heidelberg, Germany to the LBT mountain lab on Mt. Graham, Arizona in February 2013. The system was unpacked, assembled in the LBT clean room, and internally optically aligned. We present the results of our system tests, including star enlarger alignment and system alignment. We also present our immediate plans for on-sky closed loop tests on the LBT scheduled for late Fall. Because plans for all ELTs call for ground layer correction, the Pathfinder provides valuable preliminary information not only for the full LINC-NIRVANA system, but also for future advanced MCAO systems.
LINC-NIRVANA (LN) is a high resolution, near infrared imager that uses a multiple field-of-view, layer-oriented, multi-conjugate AO system, consisting of four multi-pyramid wavefront sensors (two for each arm of the Large Binocular Telescope, each conjugated to a different altitude). The system employs up to 40 star probes, looking at up to 20 natural guide stars simultaneously. Its final goal is to perform Fizeau interferometric imaging, thereby achieving ELT-like spatial resolution (22.8 m baseline resolution). For this reason, LN is also equipped with a fringe tracker, a beam combiner and a NIR science camera, for a total of more than 250 optical components and an overall size of approximately 6x4x4.5 meters. This paper describes the tradeoffs evaluated in order to achieve the alignment of the system to the telescope. We note that LN is comparable in size to planned ELT instrumentation. The impact of such alignment strategies will be compared and the selected procedure, where the LBT telescope is, in fact, aligned to the instrument, will be described. Furthermore, results coming from early night-time commissioning of the system will be presented.
The super-massive 4 million solar mass black hole (SMBH) SgrA* shows variable emission from the millimeter to the X-ray domain. A detailed analysis of the infrared light curves allows us to address the accretion phenomenon in a statistical way. The analysis shows that the near-infrared flux density excursions are dominated by a single state power law, with the low states of SgrA* limited by confusion through the unresolved stellar background. We show that for 8-10m class telescopes blending effects along the line of sight will result in artificial compact star-like objects of 0.5-1 mJy that last for about 3-4 years. We discuss how the imaging capabilities of GRAVITY at the VLTI, LINC-NIRVANA at the LBT and METIS at the E-ELT will contribute to the investigation of the low variability states of SgrA*.
Current designs for all three extremely large telescopes show the overwhelming adoption of the pyramid wavefront sensor (P-WFS) as the WFS of choice for adaptive optics (AO) systems sensing on natural guide stars (NGS) or extended objects. The key advantages of the P-WFS over the Shack-Hartmann are known and are mainly provided by the improved sensitivity (fainter NGS) and reduced sensitivity to spatial aliasing. However, robustness and tolerances of the P-WFS for the ELTs are not currently well understood. In this paper, we present simulation results for the single-conjugate AO mode of HARMONI, a visible and near-infrared integral field spectrograph for the European Extremely Large Telescope. We first explore the wavefront sensing issues related to the telescope itself; namely the island effect (i.e. differential piston) and M1 segments phasing errors. We present mitigation strategies to the island effect and their performance. We then focus on some performance optimisation aspects of the AO design to explore the impact of the RTC latency and the optical gain issues, which will in particular affect the high-contrast mode of HARMONI. Finally, we investigate the influence of the quality of glass pyramid prism itself, and of optical aberrations on the final AO performance. By relaxing the tolerances on the fabrication of the prism, we are able to reduce hardware costs and simplify integration. We show the importance of calibration (i.e. updating the control matrix) to capture any displacement of the telescope pupil and rotation of the support structure for M4. We also show the importance of the number of pixels used for wavefront sensing to relax tolerances of the pyramid prism. Finally, we present a detailed optical design of the pyramid prism, central element of the P-WFS.
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