Science Operations

Adaptive Optics (AO) with LUCI

LUCI AO Pages:

Background:

Both LUCIs are designed to work with the 2nd generation LBT AO upgrade Single conjugated adaptive Optics Upgrade for LBT (SOUL).  The SOUL upgrade increases the number of corrections which can be applied to the system to improve image quality, and allows for fainter stars to be selected as AO Reference stars, thereby opening up more of the sky for science.  SOUL + LUCI can achieve  diffraction limited image quality on-axis.  Off-axis, SOUL can significantly improve the point spread function (PSF), yielding PSFs with full-width-at-half maximum (FWHM) as good as 10’s of milli-arcseconds (the quality depends on the angular distance between the AO Reference star and the science target).

Diffraction limited (DL) observations with LUCI are done with the N30 camera, which provides a 30″x30″ field-of-view (FOV).  Observations can be dithered to increase the size of the observed field.  DL observations include imaging and eventually longslit spectroscopy (0″.13 wide slit).

Figure 1:  LUCI-AO DL Setup, including the N30 Field of VIew, the AO Patrol Field, and the off-axis Automated Guider and Wavefront sensors patrol field and hardware (with vignette).

However, users which require a significantly larger FOV (4’x4′), and/or require multi-object slit (MOS) spectroscopy may wish to look at Enhanced Seeing mode (ESM).  This mode does not achieve diffraction limited PSFs (or PSFs <<0.2″ ), but can significantly improve the PSF.  In excellent natural seeing, PSFs ~ 0″.22 have been repeatedly achieved.  In poorer conditions, ESM can improve the natural seeing by 2-3x.

Figure 2:  LUCI ESM Setup, including theN375 Field of VIew, the AO Patrol Field, and the off-axis Automated Guider and Wavefront sensors patrol field and hardware (with vignette).  Note that the N375 FOV encompasses the AO Patrol Field.

Available Modes (shared risk):

  1. LUCI-1 Imaging – Full AO
  2. LUCI-1 Imaging, and spectroscopy (including multi-object slit masks) – ESM

Additional Resources:

Arcetri Homepage for SOUL (LUCI and LBTI) Information.