We have built a hybrid turbulence profiler measuring simultaneously the atmospheric turbulence structure with a Shack-
Hartmann wave front sensor and a G-SCIDAR (scintillation sensor). This is the first instrument combining two different
techniques to measure simultaneously the turbulence structure. The hybrid profiler has been installed at the Carlos
Sánchez Telescope (TCS) at the Teide Observatory (OT), in Tenerife Spain. The G-SCIDAR arm is already working
properly and we are still testing the Shack-Hartmann arm.
We have developed an algorithm to eliminate the dome seeing contribution to turbulence profiles derived from G-SCIDAR
data. The algorithm, based on the parity of functions, is completely automated and it takes only a few
seconds to process a full night of G-SCIDAR data. Seeing measurements obtained from turbulence profiles derived
from G-SCIDAR observations and removing the dome contribution with our algorithm are in good agreement
with seeing data obtained using Differential Image Motion Monitors (DIMMs). An important advantage of the
proposed procedure is that it permits an automated reduction during the calculation process and it could be
implemented to work in real time. The formulation to identify the shape of the dome seeing could be extended
to other problems of shape recognition whenever it is even.
We present the statistical results of the optical-turbulence profiles at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos over a period of six consecutive months. The data were obtained using the generalized SCIDAR technique at the 1m Jacobous Kaptein Telescope. In general, most of the turbulence is concentrated close to the observatory level (2400 m above sea level) with no more than two turbulent layers at higher altitudes. The temporal evolution along six consecutive months indicates that the turbulence is concentrated at lower altitude layers during winter. Large isoplanatic angles are also reached in winter compared to the values in spring. For the turbulence profiles measured in February, March and April we have analized the statistical position of demorfable mirrors in an ideal Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics system (with two or three deformable mirrors) and the improvements in the isoplanatic angles.
In the planning stage of extremely large telescopes, site testing and study of high performance adaptive optics systems plays very important roles. Site testing is a very time consuming task, therefore, we have built a fully automatic device - the CUTE SCIDAR instrument with a user-friendly interface and real time processing. This instrument is already in operation and now has been installed in the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope of Roque de los Muchachos Observatory at La Palma for periodical turbulence profiling.
A second version with an additional phase sensor bench contains a motorized field stop, a field lens, a collimator lens, and a Shack-Hartmann sensor. This instrument measures the turbulence from both amplitude and phase variations of the same distorted wave at high frequency bandwidth, with a high resolution and dynamic range. On the one hand, this will solve the calibration problem between different turbulence sensors. On the other hand, it allows investigating the performance of multi-conjugated wavefront sensing using real time information from SCIDAR data and proving validity of the near field assumption. From preliminary Shack-Hartmann measurements we conclude that the instrument should be flexible to change optical layout and detection parameters according to the turbulence conditions. Therefore, the phase sensor branch includes automatically controlled moveable devices, and in the future, fast communication facilities between control computers of both SCIDAR and wavefront sensing are previewed. In this paper, we will present our objectives of building such an instrument, give a detailed state of art design, and considerate the preparation of first observational campaigns, that are the first scientific tasks to do.
We present a new generation SCIDAR instrument that is a fully automatically controlled device with a user-friendly interface. Alignment and observation are reduced to easy and rapid handling without the effort operating in the dome. This instrument is installed in the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma. We describe our progress from prototype to second generation instrument, emphasizing the design and the software for Cute SCIDAR, and show profiles from systematic monitoring using the prototype instrument on Tenerife and Cute SCIDAR on La Palma.
The statistics of vertical structure of the turbulence affect the complexity of the design and implementation of Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) systems. The operation of these systems could be optimized if the stability of the layers were such as to permit to fix the deformable mirrors (DMs) at specific heights. Moreover, it is desirable to know the effects on the placement of the DMs and the gain of the isoplanatic angle in terms of site characterization.
From the turbulence profiles measured with the G-SCIDAR technique we have analyzed the statistics of the heights of the DMs and the resulting isoplanatic angles. These results are based on the data from a long ongoing campaign at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma) and Teide Observatory (Tenerife) with the highest statistical coverage to date. We have used two ideal MCAO systems, consisting of two and three DMs, and, from a specific comparison in simultaneous measurements over two nights, we show the evolution of the position of DMs and isoplanatic angles in both sites, which can sporadically reach values greater than 60" in 500 nm. We also study the effects of the stability of the conjugate planes on the improvements in the isoplanatic angles.
SCIDAR has proved to be the most efficient technique to obtain the optical vertical structure of the atmospheric turbulence measured from ground level. However, the common procedure of obtaining the data, as well as its 'a posteriori' treatment, requires a huge number of highly qualified human resources. A systematic monitoring program becomes really onerous. Consequently, the development of a full automatically controlled SCIDAR device seems to be evidently justified. We have recently developed a SCIDAR instrument providing high performances in automatic control and data reduction, presently in test pahse. It has been designed for the Jacobus Kapstein Telescope at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, with the goal of monitoring the vertical turbulence with a high temporal coverage. This device is not only restricted to the JKT but can also be used for other telescopes.
Knowledge of vertical structure of the turbulence in a site is an essential input for the requirements, performances and operation of Adaptive Optics systems. The statistics of the turbulence intensity and the coherence time of the layers affect the complexity of the design and implementation of a particular MCAO system. On the other hand, the operation of such systems could be optimized if the height and velocity of the layers were available in real time. We present statistical results of the SCIDAR turbulence profiles obtained at the observatories Canary Islands. Statistics of characteristic parameters, of special interest for MCAO, are presented here, together with their temporal evolution. The results have been checked with simultaneous meteorological measurements. We have used the balloon sounding meteorological database of the Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia of the Santa Cruz station (Tenerife) to evaluate the physical conditions related with the behavior of the optical propagation. We have compared this study with the database of indirect measurements from satellites. The reliability of these data has been proved in relation to the balloon meteorological database for all height levels on Tenerife.
The experimental study of laser beam propagation in turbulence is relevant to fields such as adaptive optics and optical communications. Turbulence sensing for astronomical purposes requires a convergent laser beam adequately focused on the sodium mesospheric layer. Free Optical communications ground-to-satellite usually are based on divergent laser beams travelling partially through the atmosphere. We present several measurements of the gaussian beam radius for divergent and convergent laser beams propagated in vertical paths. The determinations were carried out at the Teide Observatory (Canary Islands) from the analysis of Rayleigh scattering. The turbulence profile was simultaneously measured with a SCIntillation Detection And Ranging (SCIDAR) instrument. This way, we analyse the influence of the different turbulence layers in the focusing problem through the empirical relation between the beam waist radius and the intensity of the turbulence. We present the experimental set-up, the first results of the experiment and the plans to conduct a statistical study in the future.
We briefly recall the principle of the polychromatic laser guide star, which aims at providing measurements of the tilt of incoming wavefronts with a 100% sky coverage, We describe the main results of the feasibility study of this concept undertaken within the ELP-OA porgramme. We finally summarize our plans for a full demonstrator at Observatoire de Haute-Provence.
We describe the current status of the ELP-OA project in which we try to demonstrate in practice that it is possible to measure the tilt of a wave front using only a polychromatic laser guide star and no natural guide star. The first phase of ELP-OA, consisting of feasibility experiments, has recently been completed successfully. This paper provides an overview over the results of this first phase and over the continuation of the ELP-OA project.
Adaptive optics at astronomical telescopes aims at correcting in real time the phase corrugations of incoming wavefronts caused by the turbulent atmosphere, as early proposed by Babcock. Measuring the phase errors requires a bright source located within the isoplanatic patch of the program source. The probability that such a reference source exists is a function of the wavelength, of the required image quality (Strehl ratio), of the turbulence optical properties, and of the direction of the observation. It turns out that the sky coverage is disastrously low in particular in the visible wavelength range where, unfortunately, the gain in spatial resolution brought by adaptive optics is the largest. Foy and Labeyrie have proposed to overcome this difficulty by creating an artificial point source in the sky in the direction of the observation relying on the backscattered light due to a laser beam. This laser guide star (hereinafter referred to as LGS) can be bright enough to allow us to accurately measure the wavefront phase errors, except for two modes which are the piston (not relevant in this case) and the tilt. Pilkington has emphasized that the round trip time of the laser beam to the mesosphere, where the LGS is most often formed, is significantly shorter than the typical tilt coherence time; then the inverse-return-of-light principle causes deflections of the outgoing and the ingoing beams to cancel. The apparent direction of the LGS is independent of the tilt. Therefore the tilt cannot be measured only from the LGS. Until now, the way to overcome this difficulty has been to use a natural guide star to sense the tilt. Although the tilt is sensed through the entire telescope pupil, one cannot use a faint source because $APEX 90% of the variance of the phase error is in the tilt. Therefore, correcting the tilt requires a higher accuracy of the measurements than for higher orders of the wavefront. Hence current adaptive optics devices coupled with a LGS face low sky coverage. Several methods have been proposed to get a partial sky coverage for the tilt. The only one providing us with a full sky coverage is the polychromatic LGS (hereafter referred to as PLGS). We present here a progress report of the R&D program Etoile Laser Polychromatique et Optique Adaptative (ELP-OA) carried out in France to develop the PLGS concept. After a short recall of the principles of the PLGS, we will review the goal of ELP-OA and the steps to get over to bring it into play. We finally shortly described the effort in Europe to develop the LGS.
Adaptive optics at astronomical telescopes aims at correcting in real time the phase corrugations of incoming wavefronts caused by the turbulent atmosphere, as early proposed by Babcock. Measuring the phase errors requires a bright source, which is located within the isoplanatic patch of the program source. The probability that such a reference source exists is a function of the wavelength of the observation, of the required image quality (Strehl ratio), of the turbulence optical properties, and of the direction of the observation. Several papers have addressed the problem of the sky coverage as a function of these parameters (see e.g.: Le Louarn et al). It turns out that the sky coverage is disastrously low in particular in the short (visible) wavelength range where, unfortunately, the gain in spatial resolution brought by adaptive optics is the largest. Foy and Labeyrie have proposed to overcome this difficulty by creating an artificial point source in the sky in the direction of the observation relying on the backscattered light due to a laser beam. This laser guide star (hereafter referred to as LGS) can be bright enough to allow us to accurately measure the wavefront phase errors, except for two modes which are the piston (which is not relevant in this case) and the tilt. Pilkington has emphasized that the round trip time of the laser beam to the mesosphere, where the LGS is most often formed, is significantly shorter than the typical tilt coherence time; then the inverse-return- of-light principle causes deflections of the outgoing and the ingoing beams to cancel. The apparent direction of the LGS is independent of the tilt. Therefore the tilt cannot be measured only from the LGS. Until now, the way to overcome this difficulty has been to use a natural guide star to sense the tilt. Although the tilt is sensed through the entire telescope pupil, one cannot use a faint source because approximately equals 90% of the variance of the phase error is in the tilt. Therefore, correcting the tilt requires a higher accuracy of the measurements than for higher orders of the wavefront. Hence current adaptive optics devices coupled with a LGS face low sky coverage. Several methods have been proposed to get a partial or total sky coverage for the tilt, such as the dual adaptive optics concept, the elongation perspective method, or the polychromatic LGS (hereafter referred to as PLGS). We present here a progress report of the R&D program Etoile Laser Polychromatique et Optique Adaptative (ELP-OA) carried out in France to develop the PLGS concept. After a short recall of the principles of the PLGS, we will review the goal of ELP-OA and the steps to get over to bring it into play.
KEYWORDS: Laser guide stars, Telescopes, Sodium, Stars, Global system for mobile communications, Oscillators, Wavefronts, Adaptive optics, Calibration, Photometry
We present results from measurements of the return flux from a polychromatic sodium laser guide star produced in Pierrelatte, France during the PASS-2 experiment. In the experiment, photometry of light at 330, 569, 589, and 589.6 nm emitted by mesospheric sodium under two-color laser excitation (569 and 589 nm) was performed. The variation of oscillator and laser configurations as well as simultaneous measurements of the atmospheric coherence length and the mesospheric sodium density permit a comparison of the results with atomic physics models. Using the results, we can determine the setup that produces the maximum return flux from the polychromatic laser guide star. The knowledge gained will be used to aid the ELP- OA project, which has as its goal the design, testing, and implementation of an adaptive optics system that uses a polychromatic laser guide star for wave front tilt measurements.
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