LBT FLAO system: an attempt to highlight Piero’s views about the project. Disclaimer: the opinions contained in the presentation are shared between most of the memebr of the AO group. However they sometime differs from the opinions of Piero !!!!

Talk summary The FLAO system main components -The adaptive secondary mirror -The wavefront sensor The system performance in solar tower & on sky Possible FLAO upgrades for LBT & ELTs

The Principles of Piero-dynamics 1)Avoiding people get satisfied with what they have already found. 2) Convincing people they can do what they think is possible....and spending days of discussions convincing them. 3) Supporting the idea that lenghtly plans can be unnecessary. 4) Disappointing people changing idea when new technical reasons show a new (but barely possible) solution. Applications of Piero-dynamics principles to the FLAO system development, realization and upgrades, as known to the Arcetri AO group, will be highlighted in red in this presentation.

A system Overview LBT672a unit 911mm diameter 1.6mm thick, (Mirror lab) 672 actuators Settling time < 1ms 30nm WFE LBT WFS unit Pyramid sensor 30x30 to 5x5 subap. Tilt mod.  2-6  D 1Kfps max [30x30]....as planned in 2001

The adaptive secondary mirror Missing picture of P25 prototype. The pros: no one even think in 2001 of realize such a complicate thing for a real telescope. Validation: a sentence from Guy Monnet, head of Instrumenation department at ESO,(a very polite and competent person): «Simone, I do not think this is a good project for a post-doc. You should find something realizable» The cons: it can not provide correction in the visible and/or can not achieve contrasts of 10^-7 easily. However upgrades are still possibles

The pyramid WFS The pros: 1)other people consider the idea totally useless. Tipically Italian. It sounds like buying a a shirt from Armani paying 1000 Euro for nothing. 2)Very easy to realize. Notes from Arcetri AO meeting (2001): «Piero, we can not build it in 1 week!?!!» «Simone, be serious, we are speaking of a pyramid in front of a CCD......» The cons: In the current project it uses only 30x30 subapertures and required at least 141 photons per mode to achieve SR of 80%. In H band. The target was 1 photon per mode.

System development schedule # of person involved (2001) => 8 # of years required => 3.5 Start date September 1°, 2001 End date November 22°, 2004 Hmmm... too slow. Do we really need this stuff ?!!

System performance at acceptance test. Why only 78% in H band ? Why stopping at mag 16.5 ? Still 30 photons per mode per frame. Evaluation of system performance in the Arcetri AO group is not seen as particularly positive. Even if consistent with numerical results. A general important remark: why not going to visible wavelenght ? The solar tower acceptance test took place in December 2009 Here, we have contrasting opionions between Masters: P. Salinari: «78% only, uhm...» R. Ragazzoni: «Simone, astronomer will blame us all for ages. Do not promise unachievable results»

FLAO system LBT February 9 th --March 17 th.

FLAO system LBT February 9 th --March 17 th.

FLAO system LBT February 9 th --March 17 th.

FLAO system LBT February 9 th --March 17 th.

FLAO system LBT February 9 th --March 17 th.

FLAO system LBT February 9 th --March 17 th.

FLAO system LBT February 9 th --March 17 th.

First on sky results: May 25 th Intensities between open and closed loop rescaled for displaying purposes. LBT InfraRed Test Camera images: H band, 10mas/pixel scale The object: HD , K0, R=7.5, I=6.9, H=5.8, Triple Star The atmosphere: seeing 0.6arcsec V band Elevation FLAO parameters: 1 KHz, 30x30 subaps, 400 corrected modes Results: SR H 65%..73% 3.2 arcsec Some of the first closed loop images acquired the 25 th of May From FLAO press release June 6, 2010.

The HD images and SR The reference: HD [14:13: :37:34.2 ] R =7.1, H=4.4, J=5.1, K5III The atmosphere: seeing 0.9arcsec V band FLAO parameters: 1KHz, 30x30 subaps, 400 corrected modes 0.72” H Band 75% SR in 12sec J Band 46.6% SR in 20 sec Best SRs achieved! 85% H (1s) 47% J (1s)

High H band SR images The reference: HD175658, R =6.5, H=2.5 The atmosphere: seeing 0.9 arcsec V band FLAO parameters: 1KHz, 30x30 subaps, 400 corrected modes

First on sky results: a 40mas separation binary Image data H band 4s exposure time SR > 60% (no correction for 2 nd star flux) FLAO parameters 30x30 subaps 400 corrected modes 1Khz frame rate Star companion

Average value of closed loop time is 4h/night over 12 nights. Each point correspond to a different target and reports an average value of the achieved SR. H band SR vs star mag & seeing Seeing values measured by LBT DIMM K band SR values scaled from previous plot 2MASS J R+I mag 17.0 SR 6.2% H band FWHM 0.1 arcsec DIMM 0.9” 7x7 subaps 36 modes, 200 Hz 16 ph/subap/frame 2MASS J R+I mag 17.8 FWHM gain 1.4 DIMM 0.9” 7x7 subaps 5 modes, 100Hz 18 ph/subap/frame Two on sky runs performed: May 25 th -June 3 rd, June 18 th – June 25 th

Some results from last run, October Seeing values between 1.0 and 1.8 arcsec. Performance shown in term of PSF difference between open loop and closed loop Mag 12.5 Peak’s ratio ~ 30 FWHM DL Mag 16.0 Peaks ratio ~ 10 FWHM < 0.1 arcsec Magnitude 16 Peak’s ratio ~ 10 FWHM < 0.1 arcsec Mag 17.5 Peak’s ratio ~ 3 FWHM TBD 93% SR (H band, 20sec. exposure)

HST WFPC3 H Band 20min Imaging globular cluster NGC6341-M92 Dati sulla configurazione del sistema adattivo durante la osservazione LBT test camera Limiting Magnitude H = 21, in 10minutes (with AO on) The reference: R 11.5 The atmosphere: seeing 0.7arcsec V band Elevation FLAO parameters: 0.5KHz, 15x15 subaps, 153 corrected modes FLAO H Band 8min ~10 arcsec Composite image J+H However from Piero-Dynamics point of view we know that the most desired results is not been presented up to now.....

Sensor: E2V CCD47 Filter 850nm; BW 40nm First on sky results: corrected image at 850nm Star mag => R=9.3 J=7.5 H=6.7 Drizzling of 5 images SR~20% FWHM=40mas (DL=20mas) IRTC H Band, scale=10mas/pix, SR~65% Texp=6s, scale= 20mas/pix Horizontal cut The 850nm SR is consistent with Marechal scaling of 65% SR in H band From one Piero’s «E seguito a sopportare (pazientemente)...la mancanza dei promessi attachments!» «I keep waiting (patiently) for the missing promised attachments (of CCD47 images)»

The upgrade path: a first step with LLLCCD Now: about 70% SR with mag 13: sounds better!! Finally a useful system: 10% SR in K band with mag It seems we are again on the right track: no one would believe a SR of 10% with an 18 magnitude star or 85% SR with magnitude 13. Plot courtesy of M. Carbillet ( probably the next PI of FLAO development at LBT) and A. Riccardi (App. Opt, 2010)

A more sounding upgrade: add LGSs and a post focal corrector: MCAO correction in the visible Pros: -people finally are convinced: the italians are crazy. -Easiness of realization -Need many actuators Cons : no cons. -One warning: time scaling from previous FLAO system unpracticable (10 years for NGS, 40 years for LGS ?). Point to be revised. Baseline workaround: hire younger (cheaper) people for the team Change the already existing AGW unit (already proposed by ML Hart), and add a post focal deformable mirror conjugate to your favorite locations. Use multi-LGS to realize MCAO in the visible over FoV of 10/20 arcsec or more.

What’s next: E-ELT Already good chances to place an adaptive secondary technology mirror on the EELT. This has been the critical step to divert LBT on a completely unforeseen path. Unfortunately people today are more suspicious (8.4x5=42) GMT They have in the project adaptive secondaries and pyramid sensors. So here an upgrade is straightforward. TMT Seem the more difficult to convince. However, who knows

One more Piero-Dynamics applications to ELT ELT: of course here at least one important aspect has been neglected: AO in the visible with actuators (on primary mirror segments) Pros: Achieved angular resolution: 2.5 mas Detectable magnitude (scaling from 8m telescopes): mag 33 in H band with 1h integration time & SNR=3 Cons: ??????

Acknowledgments: The Arcetri AO group wants to thanks Piero Salinari, the inventor of Piero-Dynamics, to make all this possible GRAZIE PIERO FLAO LBT: 85% SR (H band), Rmag=6.50 seeing = 0.9