Robo-AO: autonomous and replicable laser-adaptive-optics for few-meter-class telescopes.
Robo-AO is an autonomous laser guide star adaptive optics (AO) system, delivering diffraction-limited resolution observing in the visible and near-infrared (0.1"-0.25") for up to hundreds of targets per night on modest sized telescopes. Robo-AO enables the exploration of science parameter spaces such as large (10k+) targeted AO surveys, rapid AO imaging of transient events and long-term AO monitoring not feasible on large diameter telescopes. The first of many envisioned systems is mid-way through its on-sky commissioning period which precedes a month long science demonstration at the Palomar Observatory 60-inch telescope.
The Robo-AO project, led by PI Christoph Baranec, is a collaboration between Caltech Optical Observatories and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics. It is partially funded by the National Science Foundation under grants AST-0906060 and AST-0960343, the Office of Naval Research under grant N00014-11-1-0903, by the Mount Cuba Astronomical Foundation and by a gift from Samuel Oschin.
Recent News
May 15th, 2012: We've returned from another awesome observing run at Palomar. While we are busily working away at reducing all of our data, here are a few gems we captured while testing the brand new eyepiece:
Mars imaged on the night of May 9th.
And the May 2012 commissioning team: Christoph, Shriharsh and Reed.
May 3rd, 2012: We are busy preparing for our last commissioning run at Palomar starting next week during which we'll be testing the pointing of the refurbished secondary mount, the new eyepiece, and the automated observing software.
April 19th, 2012: One of our SURF students from 2011, Ankit Arya (Mississippi State '12), won first place in the Research Presentation category of MSU’s Undergraduate Research Symposium with his presentation entitled, "Data Reduction and Analysis Software for Robo-AO LGS Adaptive Optics System."
March 9th, 2012: Robo-AO is available for use in 2012B through Caltech's TAC and JPL's JPAC. Please contact Christoph or Nick for more information and before submitting any proposal.
March 7th, 2012: Robo-AO's PI has been awarded funds from the Mount Cuba Astronomical Foundation to enable the completion of software necessary to make Robo-AO fully robotic. This will allow us to execute several automated science programs later this year.