Status of the PALM-3000 high order adaptive optics instrument

摘要

We report on the status of PALM-3000, the second generation adaptive optics instrument for the 5.1 meter Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory. PALM-3000 was released as a facility class instrument in October 2011, and has since been used on the Hale telescope a total of over 250 nights. In the past year, the PALM-3000 team introduced several instrument upgrades, including the release of the 32×32 pupil sampling mode which allows for correction on fainter guide stars, the upgrade of wavefront sensor relay optics, the diagnosis and repair of hardware problems, and the release of software improvements. We describe the performance of the PALM-3000 instrument as a result of these upgrades, and provide on-sky results. In the 32×32 pupil sampling mode (15.8 cm per subaperture), we have achieved K-band strehl ratios as high as 11% on a 14.4 m_v star, and in the 64×64 pupil sampling mode (8.1 cm per subaperture), we have achieved K-band strehl ratios as high as 86% on stars brighter than 7th m_v.