The Magellan Telescope adaptive secondary AO system

• DOI: 10.1117/12.789527
• Publication Date: 2008-06-30T14:14:37Z
• Authors: Laird M. Close; Victor Gasho; Derek Kopon; Phil M. Hinz; William F. Hoffmann; Alan Uomoto; Tyson Hare
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 0103 physical sciences; 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences

The Magellan Clay telescope is a 6.5m Gregorian telescope located in southern Chile at Las Campanas Observatory. The Gregorian design allows for an adaptive secondary mirror that can be tested off-sky in a straight-forward manner. We have fabricated a 85 cm diameter aspheric adaptive secondary with our subcontractors and partners. This secondary has 585 actuators with <1 msec response times. The chopping adaptive secondary will allow low emissivity AO science. We will achieve very high Strehls (~98%) in the Mid-IR AO (8-26 microns) with the BLINC/MIRAC4 Mid-IR science camera. This will allow the first "super-resolution" and nulling Mid-IR studies of dusty southern objects. We will employ a high order (585 mode) pyramid wavefront sensor similar to that used in the Large Binocular Telescope AO systems. The relatively high actuator count will allow modest Strehls to be obtained in the visible (~0.8μm). Our visible light AO (Vis AO) science camera is fed by an advanced ADC and beamsplitter piggy-backed on the WFS optical table. The system science and performance requirements, and an overview the design, interface and schedule for the Magellan AO system are presented here.