ShaneAO Status Report

Compiled for the UCOAC meeting at UCLA on Wednesday 5/21

Present Status

• ShaneAO has completed two engineering runs (one in April, one in May) 
• Now in the midst of the first shared-risk observing nights.
• We have commissioned both natural guide star (NGS) and laser guidestar (LGS) modes for observing. Most systems are checked out and working well: 

ShARCS

• ShARCS cold stop aligned to telescope pupil - much improvement in background over IRCAL's emissivity 

AO Natural Guide Star Mode

• Bright star NGS AO @ 1.5kHz correction - high Strehl (~0.8 ish, as expected in K) 
• Dim NGS down to 12'th mag - M92 picture was taken  with an 11'th mag NGS 

AO Laser Guide Star Mode

• LGS locked in 16x and 8x modes (16x, 8x = wavefront sensing at 16, 8 samples across the aperture respectively) - Laser is dim this time of year, so not much correction, but it locked and is stable 
• Laser uplink tilt correction working 
• Dim tip/tilt star in LGS mode, worked down to 15th mag., goal is 16th 
• LGS mode field steer to tip/tilt star >50 arcsec off-axis and lock

Observing Scripts

• Nod along spectrograph slit - done, but cumbersome, needs some work 
• NGS mode field steer - not very accurate and needs work - automatic nodding scripts close, but not quite finished. 
• Still needs to be done: 
• flexure compensation models for long exposures - needs data collection and implementation 
• field rotation (align along slit via Cass tub rotation) - needs checkout 

More info and pictures: http://lao.ucolick.org/ShaneAO/material/index.html