MagAO: Status and on-sky performance of the Magellan adaptive optics system

摘要

MagAO is the new adaptive optics system with visible-light and infraredscience cameras, located on the 6.5-m Magellan "Clay" telescope at Las CampanasObservatory, Chile. The instrument locks on natural guide stars (NGS) from0$^\mathrm{th}$ to 16$^\mathrm{th}$ $R$-band magnitude, measures turbulencewith a modulating pyramid wavefront sensor binnable from 28x28 to 7x7subapertures, and uses a 585-actuator adaptive secondary mirror (ASM) toprovide flat wavefronts to the two science cameras. MagAO is a mutated clone ofthe similar AO systems at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) at Mt. Graham,Arizona. The high-level AO loop controls up to 378 modes and operates at framerates up to 1000 Hz. The instrument has two science cameras: VisAO operatingfrom 0.5-1 $\mu$m and Clio2 operating from 1-5 $\mu$m. MagAO was installed in2012 and successfully completed two commissioning runs in 2012-2013. In April2014 we had our first science run that was open to the general Magellancommunity. Observers from Arizona, Carnegie, Australia, Harvard, MIT, Michigan,and Chile took observations in collaboration with the MagAO instrument team.Here we describe the MagAO instrument, describe our on-sky performance, andreport our status as of summer 2014.