The GTC Adaptive Optics system: the high spatial resolution Adaptive Optics facility at GTC

Béjar, V. J. S.; García-Talavera, M. R.; Patrón, J.; Hernández, E.; López, R.; Marco de la Rosa, J.; Montilla, I.; Nuñez Cagigal, M.; Puga Antolín, M.; Rodríguez-Ramos, L. F.; Rosich, J.; Sánchez-Capuchino, J.; Simoes, R.; Tubio, O.; Acosta-Pulido, J. A.; Prieto, A.; Watson, A. M.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R.
Bibliographical reference

Highlights on Spanish Astrophysics X, Proceedings of the XIII Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society held on July 16-20, 2018, in Salamanca, Spain, ISBN 978-84-09-09331-1. B. Montesinos, A. Asensio Ramos, F. Buitrago, R. Schödel, E. Villaver, S. Pérez-Hoyos, I. Ordóñez-Etxeberria (eds.) p. 536-541

Advertised on:
3
2019
Number of authors
18
IAC number of authors
16
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
The GTC Adaptive Optics (GTCAO) system is the general Adaptive Optics facility that will provide diffraction limited images in the near-infrared to the GTC telescope. At Day 1 it will consist of a single deformable mirror with 21×21 actuators (373 useful actuators), conjugated to the telescope pupil and a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor with 20×20 sub-apertures using a Natural Guide Star (NGS) as a reference source. The GTCAO system is expected to provide a Strehl ratio of 0.65 in the K-band with a bright NGS, and it will be later upgraded to a Sodium Laser Guide Star (LGS) to significantly increase the sky coverage. In this proceeding, we describe the GTCAO and the LGS system, we summarize some of the scientific cases that can be carried out with the GTCAO LGS system and the FRIDA instrument, and we review the planned schedule for the GTCAO system first with the NGS and later with the LGS system.