Title
An adaptive optics upgrade for the Automated Planet Finder Telescope using an adaptive secondary mirror
Author
Bowens-Rubin, R.
Bos, A.
Hinz, P.
Holden, B.
Radovan, M.
Publication year
2022
Abstract
As we enter the era of TESS and JWST, instrumentation that can carry out radial velocity measurements of exoplanet systems is in high demand. We will address this demand by upgrading the UC Lick Observatory’s 2.4-meter Automated Planet Finder (APF) telescope with an adaptive optics (AO) system. The AO upgrade will be directly integrated into the APF telescope by replacing the telescope’s static secondary mirror with a 61-actuator adaptive secondary mirror (ASM) to minimize the disturbance to the spectrograph optics. This upgrade is enabled by The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research’s (TNO) large-format deformable mirror technology, which is constructed using a new style of high-efficiency hybrid-variable reluctance actuator. We outline the technical design and manufacturing plan for the proposed APF AO upgrade and simulate the improvement to the science yield using HCIpy. Our simulations predict the AO upgrade will reduce the PSF instabilities due to atmospheric turbulence, concentrating the light on the spectrograph slit by a multiplicative factor of more than two (doubling the telescope’s observing efficiency) for targets as dim as I = 14. When completed, the APF adaptive secondary mirror will be among the first pairings of an ASM with a radial velocity spectrograph and become a pathfinder for similar AO systems in telescopes of all sizes.
Subject
Adaptive optics
Large-format deformable mirrors
Adaptive secondary mirrors
Hybrid variable reluctance actuators
Radial velocity
Automated Planet Finder Telescope
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:9ee9fdda-e39a-4157-8f97-6f7947d77abd
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2627183
TNO identifier
981623
Publisher
SPIE
Source
SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2022, Adaptive Optics Systems VIII, 17-22 July 2022, Montréal, Québec, QC, Canada, 12185 (12185)
Document type
conference paper