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Towards an Adaptive Secondary for the VLT?
Robin Arsenault, Norbert Hubin,
Miska Le Louarn, Guy Monnet, Marc Sarazin
(ESO)
Abstract:
Putting an Adaptive Secondary on one of the VLT Unit Telescope would offer a significant boost in the observing efficiency of the Telescope and would also constitute an important step on the roadmap towards the future ESO Extremely Large Telescope. First evaluation is that such a system, when coupled to instruments with adequate performance and equipped with proper wavefront sensors could provide either diffraction-limited performance in a small field or "enhanced seeing" images over a large field. It should be able to improve on any capability of the present M2 unit, except chopping for which one would get a smaller stroke than today. The technology is mature and a comprehensive feasibility design study will start soon, hopefully to be followed by a full design in the frame of the OPTICON FP6 program. In parallel, we will carefully evaluate in liaison with Paranal Observatory and the Instrumentation Division the cost to benefit ratio of such a system coupled to an optimized set of instruments. These will be the basis for a mid-2005 decision on whether to proceed.
Full text in pdf
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