Christoph Baranec, (Institute for Astronomy, The University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Hilo, HI) Reed Riddle, (Caltech Optical Observatories, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA), Nicholas M. Law, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC), A. N. Ramaprakash, (Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Ganeshkhind, Pune, India), Shriharsh Tendulkar, Kristina Hogstrom, Khanh Bui, (Caltech Optical Observatories, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA), Mahesh Burse, Pravin Chordia, Hillol Das, (Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Ganeshkhind, Pune, India), Richard Dekany, Shrinivas Kulkarni, (Caltech Optical Observatories, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA), Sujit Punnadi, (Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Ganeshkhind, Pune, India), & Roger Smith, (Caltech Optical Observatories, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA)
Keywords: Adaptive optics, lasers, astronomy, robotics
Abstract:
Robo-AO is the first autonomous laser adaptive optics system and science instrument operating on sky. With minimal human oversight, the system robotically executes large scale surveys, monitors long-term astrophysical dynamics and characterizes newly discovered transients, all at the visible diffraction limit. The average target-to-target operational overhead, including slew time, is a mere 86 s, enabling up to ~200 observations per night. The first of many envisioned systems went live in June 2012, and has since finished 51 nights of science observing at the Palomar Observatory 60-inch (1.5 m) telescope, with over 5,600 robotic observations executed as of March 2013. The system will be augmented in late 2013 with a low-noise wide field infrared camera, which will double as a tip-tilt sensor, to widen the spectral bandwidth of observations, increase available sky coverage as well as enable deeper visible imaging using adaptive-optics sharpened infrared tip-tilt guide sources.
Date of Conference: September 10-13, 2013
Track: Adaptive Optics