2011
December 7th, 2011: Data from our November commissioning run has been used to tentatively identify a triple star system, previously thought to be a White-dwarf – M-dwarf binary star system. The observations appear in a recently submitted paper led by Project Scientist Nicholas Law.
December 6th, 2011: Science team member Prof. John Johnson explains how Robo-AO can search for nearby companions to Kepler objects in visible wavelengths as part of his “Measuring the Physical Properties of Kepler’s M Dwarf Planet Hosts” presentation at the most recent Kepler science meeting.
December 1st, 2011: Robo-AO is featured in an AIP/Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science video.
October 26th, 2011: Robo-AO has been featured in a very thorough and well written article by R. Ramachandran in the latest issue of India’s National Magazine, Frontline.
October 16th, 2011: More reduced data from the September observing run. Below are images of Kruger 60 A/B imaged in the visible and near infrared. While the Robo-AO corrected visible image takes advantage of post-facto shift-and-add processing to compensate for image motion caused by turbulence, the corrected infrared image was taken while the visible camera was stabilizing image motion by driving the fast tip-tilt mirror.
October 4th, 2011: Robo-AO’s PI was invited to present the Robo-AO project at the ongoing UC-CfAO Adaptive Optics Seminar at UC Berkeley organized by Gaspard Duchêne. A copy of the presentation, which includes many new results from our September observing run, can be found here.
September 28th, 2011: Photos from the IUSSTF meeting at IUCAA have been posted in a new photo album. We’re working on making the rest of the meeting presentations available as soon as possible, please bear with us.
September 15th, 2011: The Robo-AO team has just returned from another very successful 4-night commissioning run at Palomar’s P60 telescope. In addition to field testing many new system functions (e.g. simultaneous high-order and tip-tilt correction, automated laser acquisition routines) we started putting the AO system through its paces by working on several different science programs and of course observing the famous PTF11kly supernova discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory.
August 29th, 2011: Our IUSSTF sponsored Workshop on Astronomy with Adaptive Optics on Moderate-sized Telescopes has concluded. A special thanks to all of the IUCAA staff supporting this meeting – it went really well!
August 16th, 2011: With a few more nights, we were able to put Robo-AO through its paces on a number of interesting targets. Please see the new Astro Gallery for a larger collection of Robo-AO images. Below is just a sampling, NGC7662 (a.k.a. the Blue Snowball) and a section of M13.
August 14th, 2011: The high-order AO loop was closed for the first time with a binary star in the visible camera! We’re still working on including tip-tilt correction (which causes the images to still bounce around.) More to come shortly…
August 13th, 2011: The replacement Pockels cell is working, the new UVCCD is seeing more laser light and we were able to realign the system to the now off-axis laser projector. Below is an uncorrected image of the laser wavefront sensor – the large pattern deformation is due to mirror and collimation errors with the P60 telescope. We were able to close the high-order AO loop but not yet on a science target. Over the next four nights we will be testing the AO correction on a variety of objects.
August 8th, 2011: The preliminary program for the “Astronomy with Adaptive Optics on Moderate-sized Telescopes” has just been released. See the program here.
June 25th, 2011: Robo-AO’s PI presented a talk entitled, “Pushing the limits of Adaptive Optics: P3K and Robo-AO,” to the Friends of Palomar Observatory. Thanks go to Scott Kardel for organizing the talk.
June 22nd, 2011: Robo-AO’s next project and science workshop, funded by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, will be held on August 22nd to the 25th at IUCAA (Pune, India).
June 8th, 2011: Robo-AO’s PI has been awarded funds from the Office of Naval Research through the DURIP program to support “Research on astrometric error sources in mercury cadmium telluride arrays.” This award will greatly enhance Robo-AO’s infrared imaging capability and its ability to perform ultra-precision astrometric measurements – useful for discovering planets from the wobble of stars and mapping the dark matter distribution in our galaxy. Read the DoD news release here.
May 23rd, 2011: The Robo-AO team has just returned from another week of commissioning at Palomar observatory. Despite the loss of over half of the week due to high humidity, the team was able to make significant progress. The laser wavefront sensor was demonstrated to work properly, including the high-speed optical switch (Pockels cell) used for range-gating the laser pulses. Unfortunately during the run, our Pockels cell crystal experienced an unrecoverable failure before we were able to close the high-order adaptive optics loop and demonstrate diffraction-limited visible light imaging. The Pockels cell is being replaced with a more robust design and we’re hoping to get back to Palomar in late July with the final instrument.
April 26th, 2011: Robo-AO is back at Caltech after a week at the P60. Unfortunately the weather was less than ideal and we had the equivalent of 1 clear night. We were able to align the laser to the high-order wavefront sensor and get the range gating system working. Fine tuning of the wavefront sensor will need to be done when we’re back on sky starting the 16th of May. In the meantime, here are a few neat pictures captured during the run:
April 18th, 2011: Robo-AO has just been mounted on Palomar’s P60 telescope to commence a week of on-sky testing of the range-gated UV laser guide star. Stay tuned for more updates soon.
April 7th 2011: Project Scientist Nicholas Law highlighted Robo-AO in his presentation, “Taking the Twinkle Out of the Stars,” as part of the University of Toronto’s public lecture series.
February 23rd, 2011: The baseplate for the Robo-AO Cassegrain AO system and science instruments has been successfully installed on the P60 telescope at Palomar Observatory. Focusing light from the telescope’s secondary mirror enters the instrument through a small hole at the center of the breadboard. A fold mirror will then direct light to a series of optics mounted to the underside of the breadboard.
February 10th, 2011: We’ve just been awarded funds from the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum to host a several day workshop on Robo-AO science, technology and future deployments and plans. The workshop will be held at Robo-AO partner institution IUCAA in Pune, India. Dates and agenda pending.
January 23rd, 2011: Our team has just returned from a very successful installation and testing of the laser periscope at the P60. More pictures will be posted soon, but until then, please see the Palomar Skies Blog by Scott Kardel for a detailed description and more pictures from our testing. A huge thanks as well to the entire Palomar staff who have been extremely helpful and supportive during our phased deployment of Robo-AO at the observatory!
January 12th, 2011: Today we tested installing the new laser periscope structure to the P60 telescope in advance of our upcoming second laser testing run next week. Many thanks again to the Palomar staff, especially Steve Kunsman, Greg Van Idsinga and Jeff Zolkower, for their assistance and patience with our project.
January 7th, 2011: We have openings this summer for up to three undergraduates on adaptive optics related research through Caltech’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program. Please see the SURF announcements: Link 1 Link 2
January 5th, 2011: Our engineering grade near-infrared camera has just arrived!
