The ORP on-sky community access program for adaptive optics instrumentation development

Morris, T.; Osborn, J.; Reyes, M.; Montilla, I.; Rousset, G.; Gendron, E.; Fusco, T.; Neichel, B.; Esposito, S.; Garcia, P. J. V.; Kulcsar, C.; Correia, C.; Beuzit, J. -L.; Bharmal, N. A.; Bardou, L.; Staykov, L.; Bonaccini Calia, D.
Bibliographical reference

Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Conference Series

Advertised on:
12
2020
Number of authors
17
IAC number of authors
2
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
On-sky testing of new instrumentation concepts is required before they can be incorporated within facility-class instrumentation with certainty that they will work as expected within a real telescope environment. Increasingly, many of these concepts are not designed to work in seeing-limited conditions and require an upstream adaptive optics system for testing. Access to on-sky AO systems to test such systems is currently limited to a few research groups and observatories worldwide, leaving many concepts unable to be tested. A pilot program funded through the H2020 OPTICON program offering up to 15 nights of on-sky time at the CANARY Adaptive Optics demonstrator is currently running but this ends in 2021. Pre-run and on-sky support is provided to visitor experiments by the CANARY team. We have supported 6 experiments over this period, and plan one more run in early 2021. We have recently been awarded for funding through the H2020 OPTICON-RADIO PILOT call to continue and extend this program up until 2024, offering access to CANARY at the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope and 3 additional instruments and telescopes suitable for instrumentation development. Time on these facilities will be open to researchers from across the European research community and time will be awarded by answering a call for proposals that will be assessed by an independent panel of instrumentation experts. Unlike standard observing proposals we plan to award time up to 2 years in advance to allow time for the visitor instrument to be delivered. We hope to announce the first call in mid-2021. Here we describe the facilities offered, the support available for on-sky testing and detail the eligibility and application process.