SPHERE: the exoplanet imager for the Very Large Telescope

Observations of circumstellar environments to look for the direct signal of exoplanets and the scattered light from disks has significant instrumental implications. In the past 15 years, major developments in adaptive optics, coronagraphy, optical manufacturing, wavefront sensing and data processing, together with a consistent global system analysis have enabled a new generation of high-contrast imagers and spectrographs on large ground-based telescopes with much better performance. One of the most productive is the Spectro-Polarimetic High contrast imager for Exoplanets REsearch (SPHERE) designed and built for the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. SPHERE includes an extreme adaptive optics system, a highly stable common path interface, several types of coronagraphs and three science instruments. Two of them, the Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS) and the Infra-Red Dual-band Imager and Spectrograph (IRDIS), are designed to efficiently cover the near-infrared (NIR) range in a single observation for efficient young planet search. The third one, ZIMPOL, is designed for visible (VIR) polarimetric observation to look for the reflected light of exoplanets and the light scattered by debris disks. This suite of three science instruments enables to study circumstellar environments at unprecedented angular resolution both in the visible and the near-infrared. In this work, we present the complete instrument and its on-sky performance after 4 years of operations at the VLT.Comment: Final version accepted for publication in A&

Implementation of Branch-Point-Tolerant Wavefront Reconstructor for Strong Turbulence Compensation

Branch points arise in optical transmissions due to strong atmospheric turbulence, long propagation paths, or a combination of both. Unfortunately, these conditions are very often present in desired operational scenarios for laser weapon systems, optical communication, and covert imaging, which suffer greatly when traditional adaptive optics systems either cannot sense branch points or implement non-optimal methods for sensing and correcting branch points. Previous research by Pellizzari presented a thorough analysis of various novel branch point tolerant reconstructors in the absence of noise. In this research a realistic model of the Air Force Institute of Technology\u27s adaptive optics system is developed and used for the first realistic tests of these branch point tolerant reconstructors. Utilizing a self-referencing interferometer as the high-order wavefront sensor -- this type of sensor being theoretically immune to scintillation -- this effort has extended previous theoretical work by adding realistic noise effects to the SRI\u27s measurements before reconstructing the wavefronts and applying the control law. Not only is the adaptive optics correction shown to outperform the traditional techniques by as much as 126%, but several new theories and refinements to existing theories were discovered along the way. This study provides a foundation to guide hardware implementation in the future, where noise effects will be present

The Anisoplanatic Point Spread Function in Adaptive Optics

The effects of anisoplanatism on the adaptive optics point spread function are investigated. A model is derived that combines observations of the guide star with an analytic formulation of anisoplanatism to generate predictions for the adaptive optics point spread function at arbitrary locations within the field of view. The analytic formulation captures the dependencies of anisoplanatism on aperture diameter, observing wavelength, angular offset, zenith angle and turbulence profile. The predictions of this model are compared to narrowband 2.12 um and 1.65 um images of a 21 arcsec binary (mV=7.3, 7.6) acquired with the Palomar Adaptive Optics System on the Hale 5 meter telescope. Contemporaneous measurements of the turbulence profile made with a DIMM/MASS unit are used together with images of the primary to predict the point spread function of the binary companion. Predicted companion Strehl ratios are shown to match measurements to within a few percent, whereas predictions based on the isoplanatic angle approximation are highly discrepant. The predicted companion point spread functions are shown to agree with observations to 10%. These predictions are used to measure the differential photometry between binary members to an accuracy of 1 part in 10^{3}, and the differential astrometry to an accuracy of 1 mas. Errors in the differential astrometry are shown to be dominated by differential atmospheric tilt jitter. These results are compared to other techniques that have been employed for photometry, astrometry, and high contrast imaging.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figure

Noninvasive imaging of the thirteen-lined ground squirrel photoreceptor mosaic.

Ground squirrels are an increasingly important model for studying visual processing, retinal circuitry, and cone photoreceptor function. Here, we demonstrate that the photoreceptor mosaic can be longitudinally imaged noninvasively in the 13-lined ground squirrel (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus) using confocal and nonconfocal split-detection adaptive optics scanning ophthalmoscopy using 790 nm light. Photoreceptor density, spacing, and Voronoi analysis are consistent with that of the human cone mosaic. The high imaging success rate and consistent image quality in this study reinforce the ground squirrel as a practical model to aid drug discovery and testing through longitudinal imaging on the cellular scale

Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics images of the Trapezium Cluster

Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) combines the advantages of standard adaptive optics, which provides high contrast and high spatial resolution, and of wide field ~1' imaging. Up to recently, MCAO for astronomy was limited to laboratory experiments. In this paper, we present the first scientific results obtained with the first MCAO instrument put on the sky. We present a new study of the Trapezium cluster using deep MCAO images with a field of view of 1'x1' obtained at the VLT. We have used deep J, H and Ks images recently obtained with the prototype MCAO facility MAD at the VLT in order to search for new members and new multiple systems in the Trapezium cluster. On bright targets (Ks~9mag), these images allow us to reach DeltaKs~6mag as close as 0.4" We report the detection of 128 sources, including 10 new faint objects in the magnitude range between 16.1<Ks<17.9mag. In addition to all previously known multiple systems with separations greater than 0.1", we confirm the multiplicity of TCC-055. We also report the detection in J, H and Ks of a very red extended embedded protostellar object, HC419, previously detected in the thermal infrared only. The analysis of the first MCAO images obtained on the sky demonstrates not only the technical feasibility of MCAO but also its great potential and versatility in terms of scientific outputs.Comment: High resolution version available on http://arrakeen.free.fr/pub/madorion.pdf Accepted 25 Sep. 2007 for publication in A&A, 14 pages, 11 figure

On-sky wide field adaptive optics correction using multiple laser guide stars at the MMT

We describe results from the first astronomical adaptive optics system to use multiple laser guide stars, located at the 6.5-m MMT telescope in Arizona. Its initial operational mode, ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO), provides uniform stellar wavefront correction within the 2 arc minute diameter laser beacon constellation, reducing the stellar image widths by as much as 53%, from 0.70 to 0.33 arc seconds at lambda = 2.14 microns. GLAO is achieved by applying a correction to the telescope's adaptive secondary mirror that is an average of wavefront measurements from five laser beacons supplemented with image motion from a faint stellar source. Optimization of the adaptive optics system in subsequent commissioning runs will further improve correction performance where it is predicted to deliver 0.1 to 0.2 arc second resolution in the near-infrared during a majority of seeing conditions.Comment: 13 pages, 1 table, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal. Expected March 200

LGS AO Science Impact: Present and Future Perspectives

The recent advent of laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS AO) on the largest ground-based telescopes has enabled a wide range of high angular resolution science, previously infeasible from ground-based and/or space-based observatories. As a result, scientific productivity with LGS has seen enormous growth in the last few years, with a factor of ~10 leap in publication rate compared to the first decade of operation. Of the 54 refereed science papers to date from LGS AO, half have been published in the last ~2 years, and these LGS results have already made a significant impact in a number of areas. At the same time, science with LGS AO can be considered in its infancy, as astronomers and instrumentalists are only beginning to understand its efficacy for measurements such as photometry, astrometry, companion detection, and quantitative morphology. We examine the science impact of LGS AO in the last few years of operations, largely due to the new system on the Keck II 10-meter telescope. We review currently achieved data quality, including results from our own ongoing brown dwarf survey with Keck LGS. We assess current and near-future performance with a critical eye to LGS AO's capabilities and deficiencies. From both qualitative and quantitative considerations, it is clear that the era of regular and important science from LGS AO has arrived.Comment: Invited review for Proc of the SPIE, "Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation" (Marseilles, France, June 2008). Minor typos fixed, upgrade to Figure 3, and addition of new Gemini LGS wor

Adaptive Optics: introduction to the feature issue

This Applied Optics feature issue is a companion to the Journal of the Optical Society of America A feature issue on the same topic. The feature highlights the expansion of adaptive optics to different applications as well as its development to routine applications brought about because of significant advances in component technologies

Automatic Detection of Cone Photoreceptors In Split Detector Adaptive Optics Scanning Light Ophthalmoscope Images

Quantitative analysis of the cone photoreceptor mosaic in the living retina is potentially useful for early diagnosis and prognosis of many ocular diseases. Non-confocal split detector based adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope (AOSLO) imaging reveals the cone photoreceptor inner segment mosaics often not visualized on confocal AOSLO imaging. Despite recent advances in automated cone segmentation algorithms for confocal AOSLO imagery, quantitative analysis of split detector AOSLO images is currently a time-consuming manual process. In this paper, we present the fully automatic adaptive filtering and local detection (AFLD) method for detecting cones in split detector AOSLO images. We validated our algorithm on 80 images from 10 subjects, showing an overall mean Dice’s coefficient of 0.95 (standard deviation 0.03), when comparing our AFLD algorithm to an expert grader. This is comparable to the inter-observer Dice’s coefficient of 0.94 (standard deviation 0.04). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first validated, fully-automated segmentation method which has been applied to split detector AOSLO images