Advanced Wavefront Control at Keck Observatory

Speckle Nulling on NIRC2

Direct imaging of exoplanets require high levels of Adaptive Optics corrections while using a coronagraph. Residuals errors from the host star, in the form of speckles, drown out the signal from a possible exoplanets. The current speckle nulling algorithim seeks to cancel out residual speckles to reveal exoplanets directly on NIRC2.

Collaborators

University of Hawaii - Institute for Astronomy

W.M. Keck Observatory

Predictive Wavefront Control

Servo-lag error becomes a problem with normal Adaptive Optics systems which operate during unstale seeing conditions. Predictive wavefront control seeks to correct these errors by increasing the speed and reliability of correction.

Collaborators

University of California - Santa Cruz

W.M. Keck Observatory

Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics

Royal Observatory Edinburgh

Mirror Phasing with a Pyramid Wavefront Sensor

Simultaneously monitor the CSP surface and also operate the adaptive optics system using a single shared pyramid wavefront sensor in a closed low-bandwidth loop can decrease the phase aberration across the primary.

REDWOODS

Proposed is a new pathfinder wavefront sensing technology in the Keck II AO system called the Fast Atmospheric Self-coherent camera Technique, designed to overcome this speckle noise limit that will enable H-band Strehl ratios above 80% .