In the GRAVITY+ project, GRAVITY is presently undergoing a series of upgrades to enhance its performance, add wide field capability and thereby expand its sky coverage. Some aspects of these improvements have already been implemented and commissioned by the end of 2021, making them accessible to the community. The augmentation of sky coverage involves increasing the maximum angular separation between the celestial science object and the fringe tracking object from the previous 2 arcseconds (limited by the field of view of the VLTI) to 20 – 30 arcseconds (constrained by atmospheric conditions during observation). Phase 1 of GRAVITY+ Wide utilizes the earlier PRIMA Differential Delay Lines to compensate for the optical path length variation between the science and fringe tracking beams throughout an observation. In phase 2, we are upgrading the existing beam compressors (BC) to integrate optical path length difference compensation directly into the BC. This modification eliminates five optical reflections per beam, thereby enhancing the optical throughput of the VLTI–GRAVITY system and the bandwidth of the vibrational control. We will present the implementation of phase 2 and share preliminary results from our testing activities for GRAVITY+ Wide.
The GRAVITY+ project consists of instrumental upgrades to the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) for faint-science, high-contrast, milliarcsecond interferometric imaging. As an integral part of the GRAVITY+ Adaptive Optics (AO) architecture, the Wavefront Sensor (WFS) subsystem corrects image distortions caused by the turbulence of Earth's atmosphere. We present the opto-mechanical design of the WFS subsystem and the design strategies used to implement two payloads positioned diagonally opposite each other - Natural Guide Star (NGS) and Laser Guide Star (LGS) - within a single compact design structure. We discuss the implementation of relative motions of the two payloads covering their respective patrol fields and a nested motion within the LGS Payload covering the complete Sodium layer profile in the Earth's atmosphere.
We present latest results and further development of the image reconstruction tool GRAVITY-RESOLVE (G^R), which is specifically designed for Galactic Center observations with the near-infrared phase-referencing VLTI instrument GRAVITY. We show deep images of the Galactic Center in recent years and movies in which the stellar motion around the central massive black hole SgrA* becomes apparent on yet unmatched scales. Moreover, we present a first result of the newly implemented mosaicing method in G^R to jointly reconstruct multiple datasets which have been separately recorded on sky.
We present the Wavefront Sensor units of the Gravity Plus Adaptive Optics (GPAO) system, which will equip all 8m class telescopes of the VLTI and is an instrumental part of the GRAVITY+ project. It includes two modules for each Wavefront Sensor unit: a Natural Guide Star sensor with high-order 40×40 Shack-Hartmann and a Laser Guide Star 30×30 sensor. The state-of-the-art AO correction will considerably improve the performance for interferometry, in particular high-contrast observations for NGS observations and all-sky coverage with LGS, which will be implemented for the first time on VLTI instruments. In the following, we give an overview of the Wavefront Sensor units system after completion of their integration and characterization.
The GRAVITY instrument has transformed the field of near-infrared interferometry and is redefining the limits of ground-based observations. In Galactic Center observations, this is shown by routinely achieving below 50 μas uncertainty on astrometric measurements within a 5-minute exposure and detecting stars fainter than 19th magnitude. Nevertheless, systematic effects are still limiting the instrument's performance. In this talk, I will introduce two observing modes to overcome these limitations: Pupil modulation to improve the astrometry and metrology attenuation to overcome SNR limitations. I will detail these two modes and show how significant the improvements are on examples of on-sky data.
We have demonstrated three 4×2 hot electron bolometer (HEB) mixer arrays for operation at local oscillator (LO) frequencies of 1.4, 1.9 and 4.7 THz, respectively. These arrays consist of spiral antenna coupled NbN HEB mixers combined with elliptical lenses. These are to date the highest pixel count arrays using a quasi-optical coupling scheme at supra-THz frequencies. At 1.4 THz, we obtained an average double sideband mixer noise temperature of 330 K, a mixer conversion loss of 5.2 dB, and an optimum LO power of 210 nW. The array at 1.9 THz has an average mixer noise temperature of 425K, a mixer conversion loss of 6.4 dB, and an optimum LO power of 190 nW. For the array at 4.7 THz we obtained an average mixer noise temperature of 715 K, a mixer conversion loss of 8.9 dB, and an optimum LO power of 240 nW. We found the arrays to be uniform regarding the mixer noise temperature with a standard deviation of 3-4%, the conversion loss with a standard deviation of 8-11%, and optimum LO power with a standard deviation of 5-6%. The noise bandwidth was also measured, being 3.5 GHz for the three arrays. These performances are comparable to previously reported values in the literature for single pixels and also other detector arrays at similar frequencies. Our arrays met the requirements and were employed in the Galactic/Extra-Galactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO), a NASA balloon borne observatory. GUSTO launched from Antarctica on the 31st December 2023 having a successful flight of 57 days, the longest ever recorded by NASA for such mission profile.
As part of the GRAVITY+ project, the near-infrared beam combiner GRAVITY and the VLTI are currently undergoing a series of significant upgrades to further improve the performance and sky coverage. The instrumental changes will be transformational, and for instance uniquely position GRAVITY to observe the broad line region of hundreds of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) at a redshift of two and higher. The increased sky coverage is achieved by enlarging the maximum angular separation between the celestial science object (SC) and the off-axis fringe tracking (FT) star from currently 2 arcseconds (arcsec) up to unprecedented 30 arcsec, limited by the atmospheric conditions. This was successfully demonstrated at the VLTI for the first time.
With the upgrade from GRAVITY to GRAVITY+ the instrument will evolve to an all-sky interferometer that can observe faint targets, such as high redshift AGN. Observing the faintest targets requires reducing the noise sources in GRAVITY as much as possible. The dominant noise source, especially in the blue part of the spectrum, is the backscattering of the metrology laser light onto the detector. To reduce this noise we introduce two new metrology modes. With a combination of small hardware changes and software adaptations, we can dim the metrology laser during the observation without losing the phase referencing. For single beam targets, we can even turn off the metrology laser for the maximum SNR on the detector. These changes lead to a SNR improvement of over a factor of two averaged over the whole spectrum and up to a factor of eight in the part of the spectrum currently dominated by laser noise.
We present the testbench aimed at integrating the GRAVITY+ adaptive optics GPAO. It consists of two independent elements, one reproducing the Coudé focus of the telescope, including the telescope deformable mirror mount (with its surface facing down), and one reproducing the Coudé room opto-mechanical environment, including a downwards-propagating beam, and the telescope mechanical interfaces in order to fit in the new GPAO wavefront sensor. We discuss in this paper the design of this bench and the solutions we adopted to keep the cost low, keep the design compact (allowing it to be fully contained in a 20 sqm clean room), and align the bench independently from the adaptive optics. We also discuss the features we have set in this bench.
The European Southern Observatory gives the opportunity to develop new third generation instruments for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer. Therefore, adaptive optics systems need to be upgraded, either for NAOMI on a 1.8-m auxiliary telescope or for MACAO on a 8-m unit telescope. It enables to access to new science cases such as active galactic nuclei with the GRAVITY+ project. We study here the requirements of such AO upgrade by increasing the number of sub-apertures of the wave-front sensor and the number of actuators of the deformable mirror. We evaluate the needs for a high-Strehl mode in the visible and near infrared wavelengths in various conditions of observation. We present numerical simulations to quantify the performance. We show that a moderate upgrade of NAOMI, and a significant upgrade of MACAO can enable both better dynamic range and sensitivity with the VLTI.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is developing the Athena (Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics) X-ray telescope, an L-class mission in their current Cosmic Vision cycle for long-term planning of space science missions. Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) are a new type of X-ray optics enabling future X-ray observatories such as Athena and are being developed at cosine with ESA as well as academic and industrial partners. These high-performance, modular, lightweight yet stiff, high-resolution X-ray optics shall allow missions to reach an unprecedentedly large effective area of several square meters, operating in the 0.2 to 12 keV band with an angular resolution better than 5 arc seconds. As the development of Athena mission progresses, it is necessary to validate the SPO technology under launch conditions. To this end, ruggedisation and environmental testing studies are being conducted to ensure mechanical stability and optical performance of the optics before, during and after launch. At cosine, a facility with shock, vibration, tensile strength, long time storage and thermal testing equipment has been set up to test SPO mirror module components for compliance with the upcoming Ariane launch vehicle and the mission requirements. In this paper, we report on the progress of our ongoing investigations regarding tests on mechanical and thermal stability of mirror module components such as single SPO stacks complete mirror modules of inner (R = 250 mm), middle (R = 737 mm) and outer (R = 1500 mm) radii.
GUSTO will be a NASA balloon borne terahertz observatory to be launched from Antarctica in late 2021 for a flight duration of 100-170 days. It aims at reviewing the life cycle of interstellar medium of our galaxy by simultaneously mapping the three brightest interstellar cooling lines: [OI] at 4.7 THz, [CII] at 1.9 THz, and [NII] at 1.4 THz; along the 124 degrees of the galactic plane and through a part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. It will use three arrays of 4x2 mixers based on NbN hot electron bolometers (HEBs), which are currently the most sensitive mixers for high resolution spectroscopic astronomy at these frequencies.
Here we report on the design of a novel 4.7 THz receiver for GUSTO. The receiver consists mainly of two subsystems: a 4×2 HEB quasi-optical mixer array and a 4.7 THz multi-beam LO. We describe the mixer array, which is designed as a compact monolithic unit. We show, for example, 10 potential HEB detectors with the state of the art sensitivity of 720 K measured at 2.5 THz. They have a small variation in sensitivity, being less than 3%, while also meet the LO uniformity requirements. For the multi-beam LO we demonstrate the combination of a phase grating and a single QCL at 4.7 THz, which generates 8 sub-LO beams, where the phase grating shows an efficiency of 75%. A preliminary concept for the integrated LO unit, including QCL, phase grating and beam matching optics is presented.
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