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Development of Advanced Instruments for Adaptive Optics Cameras, Spectrographs, Coronagraphs, Tomographic Cameras and Ophthalmoscopes for AO. Associate Director - James Larkin. Motivations. AO presents new capabilities and challenges for scientific instruments
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Development of Advanced Instruments for Adaptive OpticsCameras, Spectrographs, Coronagraphs, Tomographic Cameras and Ophthalmoscopes for AO Associate Director - James Larkin
Motivations • AO presents new capabilities and challenges for scientific instruments • High spatial resolution requires fine sampling • Smallphysical sizeof instrument components • Small corrected field of view • Need excellentoptical quality • Only a few simple custom AO instruments have been developed • Many of the technologies are common between AO and AO instruments (lenslets, MEMs, low noise detectors) • AO and instruments require aclose coupling
What is CfAO Doing for AO Instrumentation • Sponsor design studies for new concepts and technologies • Train graduate and undergraduate students in instrumentation • Develop new technologies with industrial partners • Organize AO instrumentation workshops • Will also improve general purpose instruments • Develop reduction and analysis software and simulations • Assist with instrument proposals and design reviews at major observatories
Optimizing AO with Applications to OCTImaging of the Human Retina P.I. : Donald Miller (Indiana Univ.) • Develop Optical Coherence Tomographic Camera • Current Status • Optimizing wavefront corrector design for human eye • Designing OCT camera • Select Future Goals • Construct 37 channel DM with optimized wavefront correction. • Integrate AO system and OCT camera. • Design optimized system for clinical population.
Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope P.I. : Austin Roorda (Univ. of Houston) • Built optical testbed for AO system • Build a scanning laser ophthalmoscope • Current Status • Ordering components for SLO • Select Future Goals • Test 37 channel DM. • Combine AO system and SLO. • Develop software for acquiring and rendering 3-D retinal images. • Test and develop 2nd generation AO-SLO
Integral Field Spectrograph P.I. : James Larkin (UCLA) • Design spectrograph for Keck AO system • Work on software for Reducing 3-d data • Built Optical Testbed • Submitted proposal to CARA and NSF for instrument funding • Working on analysis package for Keck AO data – KCAM & NIRC2 • In year 2, will investigate the use of fiber optic bundles for IFS.
IRCAL – Infrared AO Camera P.I. : James Graham (U.C.Berkeley) • Facility Class IR camera optimized for the Lick 3m AO system. • Center activities concentrate on improving camera and investigating new technologies and capabilities. • Camera is also one of the main facilities available to center scientists. • New Technologies • Silicon grisms for spectroscopy • Coronagraphic masks for high contrast imaging.
Center Aspects • The three main groups of opthalmologists have coordinated their instrument developments in order to avoid direct overlap and to cover several instrument concepts. • The two astronomy instruments groups collaborate on integral field spectrograph. • Six graduates students are being trained in state-of-the-art instrumentation. • Center funding helped build a full scale test bed for the integral field spectrograph. This was crucial in gaining experience that led to a winning proposal for instrument funding. • Many of the astronomical science programs use IRCAL as their main instrument. • The silicon grisms in IRCAL have come out of a collaboration between Livermore and U.C. Berkeley center members. • A UCLA astronomy graduate student has visited the Rochester Lab.
Instruments and AO systems need to work together actively Phase diversity: move elements within instrument in & out of focus Integrated infrared tip-tilt sensors for maximum IR sensitivity (connected to goal 4) Optimize PSF shape to fit aperture and observing mode (connected to goal 2) Advanced Detectors AO on 8-10 m telescopes needs very small pixels to sample diffraction limit; requires more pixels and larger detectors. As AO pushes into the visible, instruments will need larger wavelength range - 0.5 to 5 micron HgCdTe (connected to goal 4). Partner with Rockwell Science Center to evaluate new infrared arrays (connected to goals 2 and 4). Future Instrument Developments Rockwell 2048x2048 Infrared Array
Vision for the Future • In next four years: • Integral field spectrographs will be taking spectra routinely at better than 0.1” resolution • High resolution spectrographs will be much more compact • IR spectrographs will be cheaper and have higher resolution • AO Coronagraphs will observe faint objects very close to bright stars • Protoplanetary disks • Brown Dwarfs • Vision instruments will be able to probe 3-dimensional structures of photoreceptors at the diffraction limit of the eye. • Vision instruments will be optimized for the degrees of freedom of the eye so they will be cost effective and compact.
Vision for the Future • In ten years: • Instruments for astronomical AO will be as varied and capable as instruments for ordinary telescopes today. • AO vision instruments will be mature enough to make them common tools for clinical researchers.