The MICADO first light imager for ELT: its astrometric performance

摘要

We report on our ongoing efforts to ensure that the MICADO NIR imager reaches differential absolute (often abbreviated: relative) astrometric performance limited by the SNR of typical observations. The exceptional 39m diameter collecting area in combination with a powerful multi-conjugate adaptive optics system (called MAORY) brings the nominal centroiding error, which scales as FWHM/SNR, down to a few 10 μas. Here we show that an exceptional effort is needed to provide a system which delivers adequate and calibrateable astrometric performance over the full field of view (up to 53 arcsec diameter).