The surface brightness of megaconstellation satellites trails on large telescopes

On large telescopes trails of MegaConstellation's satellites will appears significantly defocused because of their relatively short distance. Because of such effect their apparent surface brightness will be, under a range of conditions, almost constant during their apparent sweeping on the focal plane of such large facilities. A few simple relationships are worked out and discussed to show the apparent brightness of such trails, in order to evaluate their impact on operations of large optical ground based facilities.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure

Laboratory Testing the Layer Oriented Wavefront Sensor for the Multiconjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator

The Multiconjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator (MAD) for ESO-Very Large Telescopes (VLT) will demonstrate on sky the MultiConjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) technique. In this paper the laboratory tests relative to the first preliminary acceptance in Europe of the Layer Oriented (LO) Wavefront Sensor (WFS) for MAD will be described: the capabilities of the LO approach have been checked and the ability of the WFS to measure phase screens positioned at different altitudes has been experimented. The LO WFS was opto-mechanically integrated and aligned in INAF - Astrophysical Observatory of Arcetri before the delivering to ESO (Garching) to be installed on the final optical bench. The LO WFS looks for up to 8 reference stars on a 2arcmin Field of View and up to 8 pyramids can be positioned where the focal spot images of the reference stars form, splitting the light in four beams. Then two objectives conjugated at different altitudes simultaneously produce a quadruple pupil image of each reference star.Comment: 12 pages,14 figures, Proceeding of Spie Conference "Advances in Adaptive Optics II", Orlando 200

The opto-mechanical alignment procedure of the VLT Survey Telescope

The VLT Survey Telescope is a f/5.5 modified Ritchey-Chretien imaging telescope, which is being installed at the ESO-Paranal Observatory. It will provide a one square degree corrected field of view to perform survey-projects in the wavelength range from UV to I band. In this paper we describe the opto-mechanical alignment procedure of the 2.61m primary mirror, the secondary and correctors lenses onto the mechanical structure of the telescope. The alignment procedure does not rely on the mechanical precision of the mirrors. It will be achieved using ad-hoc alignment tools, described in the paper, which allows the spatial determination of optical axes (and focuses where necessary) of the optical components with respect to the axis defined by the rotation of a laser beam mounted on the instrument bearing.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, Proceeding 773357 of the SPIE Conference "Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes III", Sunday 27 June 2010, San Diego, California, US

Astrometry with the MCAO instrument MAD - An analysis of single-epoch data obtained in the layer-oriented mode

Context: Current instrument developments at the largest telescopes worldwide have provisions for Multi-Conjugated Adaptive Optics (MCAO) modules. The large field of view and more uniform correction provided by these systems is not only highly beneficial for photometric studies but also for astrometric analysis of, e.g., large dense clusters and exoplanet detection and characterization. The Multi-conjugated Adaptive optics Demonstrator (MAD) is the first such instrument and was temporarily installed and tested at the ESO/VLT in 2007. We analyzed two globular cluster data sets in terms of achievable astrometric precision. Data were obtained in the layer-oriented correction mode, one in full MCAO correction mode with two layers corrected (NGC 6388) and the other applying ground-layer correction only (47 Tuc). Aims: We aim at analyzing the first available MCAO imaging data in the layer-oriented mode obtained with the MAD instrument in terms of astrometric precision and stability. Methods: We calculated Strehl maps for each frame in both data sets. Distortion corrections were performed and the astrometric precision was analyzed by calculating mean stellar positions over all frames and by investigation of the positional residuals present in each frame after transformation to a master-coordinate-frame. Results: The mean positional precision for stars between K = 14-18 mag is ~1.2 mas in the full MCAO correction mode data of the cluster NGC 6388. The precision measured in the GLAO data (47 Tuc) reaches ~1.0 mas for stars corresponding to 2MASS K magnitudes between 9 and 12. The observations were such that stars in these magnitude ranges correspond to the same detector flux range. The jitter movement used to scan a larger field of view introduced additional distortions in the frames, leading to a degradation of the achievable precision.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

The Lack of Observational Evidence for the Quantum Structure of Spacetime at Planck Scales

It has been noted (Lieu & Hillmann) that the cumulative effect of Planck-scale phenomenology, or the structure of spacetime at extremely small scales, can be lead to the loss of the phase of radiation emitted at large distances from the observer. We elaborate on such an approach and demonstrate that such an effect would lead to an apparent blurring of distant point sources. Evidence of the diffraction pattern from the Hubble Space Telescope observations of SN 1994D and the unresolved appearance of a Hubble Deep Field galaxy at z = 5.34 lead us to put stringent limits on the effects of Planck-scale phenomenology

Extended source pyramid wave-front sensor for the human eye.

We describe a new wave-front sensor based on the previously proposed pyramid sensor. This new sensor uses an extended source instead of a point-like source avoiding in this manner the oscillation of the pyramid. After an introductory background the sensor functioning is described. Among other possible optical testing uses, we apply the sensor to measure the wave-front aberration of the human eye. An experimental system built to test this specific application is described. Results obtained both in an articficial eye and in a real eye are presented. A discussion about the sensor characteristics, the experimental results and future work prospects is also included

An update of the on-sky performance of the Layer-Oriented wave-front sensor for MAD

The Multi-conjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator, MAD, successfully demonstrated on sky the MCAO technique both in Layer Oriented and Star Oriented modes. As results of the Guaranteed Time Observations in Layer Oriented mode quality astronomy papers have been published. In this paper we concentrate on the instrumentation issues and technical aspects which stay behind this success.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, Proceedings of the SPIE conference "Adaptive Optics Systems II", 27 June 2010, San Diego, California, US