Bibcode
Montilla, I.; Basden, A. G.; García-Talavera, M. Reyes; Simoes, R.; Sánchez-Capuchino, J.; Hernández, E.
Bibliographical reference
Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 10703, id. 107033D 8 pp. (2018).
Advertised on:
7
2018
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
The Natural Guide Star Adaptive Optics system for the Gran Telescopio
Canarias (GTC) is in its integration phase, and meanwhile the Laser
Guide Star update, which will follow two years later, has recently
passed its Preliminary Design Phase. This LGS Facility will feature a
TOPTICA Na laser, and it will open up the scientific possibilities of
GTC enlarging the sky coverage of the AO system and allowing to study at
high resolution more scientific targets. A trade-off study was
undertaken to decide, among other details, the launching position of the
laser and the feasibility of a further upgrade to an MCAO system vs
technical complexity, cost and maintenance. As part of this study we
have analysed the performance of the GTCAO LGS system to ensure that it
will fulfil the specifications in all the different scenarios. Complete
end-to-end (E2E) simulations have been performed using the versatile
Durham AO Simulation Platform (DASP), including not only real
atmospheric profiles from Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos but
also the measured windshake spectrum of the secondary mirror of GTC, the
different control loops (TT, DM, focus), the laser uplink jitter and
launching telescope divergence, the segmented primary mirror and it's
cophasing residual errors, the rotating pupil etc... In this
contribution we present a detailed error budget of the system and the
results of the E2E simulations that show the impact that such a system
will have on the science done with GTC.