2022
August 11th, 2022: Robo-AO-2 is at the UH2.2-m telescope on Maunakea.
August 10th, 2022: The Robo-AO-2 instrument is now in its shipping crate – ready for a ride to the summit of Maunakea tomorrow!
August 9th, 2022: Brian and Iven are building a custom shipping crate for the Robo-AO-2 instrument to ensure a smooth ride to the summit.
August 9th, 2022: The Robo-AO team is busily getting the instrument and electronics rack tested and prepped for shipment to the UH 2.2-m telescope later this week.
August 5th, 2022: Greg and Jessica are finalizing the electronics rack in the IfAHilo machine shop. Later today we should be able to connect this to the instrument and start testing.
July 29th, 2022: Our summer student farewell lunch at Kenichi’s in Hilo. The summer goes by too fast!
July 28th, 2022: We’re gearing up for a final push on cabling the instrument and electronics rack. Our beautiful e-rack interface panel, fabricated by @ProtocaseInc, just arrived and we’re starting to install all of the connectors.
June 28th, 2022: Today we are working on (routing) cabling and assembling components into our electronics rack. Lots of work still to go, but making progress every day.
June 12th, 2022: Lots of activity in the lab this past week: we installed the science-grade infrared detector in its cryostat, and are preparing the cooled rack for installation of our electronics and computers.
June 11th, 2022: We had a farewell lunch for Robo-AO SW engineer Paul Barnes last week with food from @hiloburgers. Paul is starting at @HIElectricLight next week. We wish Paul all the best!
May 30th, 2022: We’re starting to assemble our stellar wavefront sensor (WFS). At its heart is a lens and lenslet array exchanger which lets us adjust the spatial sampling of the wavefront (c/o PALM-3000). This will be used to demonstrate hybrid wavefront sensing when used with the laser WFS.
May 30th, 2022: This weekend we’ve installed a new cold snout on our infrared science camera. This snout reduces the ambient thermal load on the detector by a factor of 10, which significantly lowers the background and increases our camera’s sensitivity.
May 28th, 2022: More sweet sweet parts! Mahalo @HamiltonIven !!!
May 27th, 2022: We used our modified DSLR camera to track down the source of some unwanted background signal. We normally use the camera to see in the UV and visible, but it also can see in the infrared. We found IR light coming from one of our mechanical stages – seen as purple in the seam.
May 26th, 2022: Our visible imaging arm with optional focal reducer and beam splitter to the stellar wavefront sensor is now installed. The focal reducer sacrifices sampling of the focal plane to quadruple the field of view – useful for imaging gas giants and low surface brightness targets.
May 24th, 2022: Occasionally we run into parts from outside shops that need a small modification or two. Luckily we have Iven and Brian in the IfA Hilo shop who will make fast work of parts. These are parts that were milled down by 0.007″ to compensate for the thickness added by anodization.
May 24th, 2022: After alignment of the system OAPs, we set up the periscope mirrors (seen as two 1″ mirrors on the left) that will pass the infrared focal plane to our infrared camera.
May 24th, 2022: A little backtracking on the optical alignment on OAP#3. The beam is a little large for our alignment wavefront sensor so we initially used shear plates. @ImagineOptic let us borrow one of their larger cameras and we were able to dial out that 45deg astigmatism.
May 11th, 2022: More covers and structure today. In the back right is an attached 3U cooled mini-rack that will house the @BMCMirrors deformable mirror electronics.
May 9th, 2022: Our covers from Universal Manufacturers (Honolulu) arrived today and we’re starting their installation.
May 7th, 2022: That’s the Robo-AO ultraviolet laser shining out of the UH 2.2-m telescope on our IfA open house t-shirts this year. A little bit of artistic license as the beam is normally invisible to humans.
May 6th, 2022: More progress this week. We have a preliminary alignment of off-axis parabolic mirrors #3 and #4, along with the tip-tilt correcting mirror.
April 28th, 2022: We just updated our signage in the IfA Hilo Adaptive Optics Lab. This was envisioned and fabricated by our own Iven Hamilton who also makes many of the mechanical parts for Robo-AO-2.
April 20th, 2022: We’re starting the alignment of off-axis parabolic mirror #2 (seen bottom). It’s getting a little crowded around the deformable mirror.
April 20th, 2022: Yesterday, we installed the large dielectric mirrors in the new tertiary mirror exchanger at the UH 2.2-m telescope. We’ll soon attach this to the primary mirror cell, reassemble the telescope, and get back to regular observing.
April 14th, 2022: We have a preliminary alignment of our laser wavefront sensor. From R to L is the Pockels cell, lenslet array, relay lens pair, and one of our UV optimized @NuvuCameras EMCCD cameras. The camera readout shows the correct number of subimages at approximately the correct locations.
April 14th, 2022: The Pockets cell optical shutter is installed and aligned. The shutter works by applying a 3.5kV potential across a BBO crystal – rotating the polarization of laser light by 90 deg. Combined with crossed polarizers, light is only transmitted when the voltage potential is present.
April 13th, 2022: With the laser dichroic in, we’ve made progress assembling the laser wavefront sensor. Pictured after the laser dichroic are the aspheric condenser lens, two fold lenses and a collimating lens (which forms an image of the telescope pupil at a specific distance and magnification).
April 6th, 2022: A big step with our wavefront sensor cameras today. Software (SW) engineer Paul can now read out images from the cameras using his own code, instead of the manufacturer’s SW. By using dedicated and streamlined code, it will be more reliable and efficient.
April 5th, 2022: Arts and crafts in the AO lab today! James and Shane are making a custom multi-layer insulation (MLI) blanket for the inside of our infrared camera. The MLI will reduce the radiative load on the inside of the camera, making the existing cooler much more efficient.
April 1st, 2022: The laser dichroic has been installed! The dichroic is a wavelength selective mirror. It allows visible and infrared light to pass through to the science instruments (appears clear in visible light; L) and reflects ultraviolet light (the UV simulator source can now be seen; R).
March 30th, 2022: Our deformable mirror (DM) is now permanently installed and aligned. Pictured is the 6.4 mm imaged pupil on the DM surface in diffuse reflection as illuminated by ultraviolet and green light. The overall grid pattern shows the locations of active and inactive actuator positions.
March 29th, 2022: Several of the enclosure parts are finished and we did a test fit today. All of the mechanical parts are designed by Morgan from IfA Manoa, and most are fabricated here at If Hilo by Iven (pictured here). Soon we’ll have covers too, made by Universal Manufacturers on Oahu.
March 24th, 2022: IfA grad student James Ou and engineer Shane (not in pic) are getting the Robo-AO-2 infrared camera ready for a new cold snout which will reduce the thermal load on the detector by a factor of 10. This will allow us to use a cold short-pass filter with warm external filters.
March 22nd, 2022: Robo-AO refereed paper #53 now available c/o lead author @SalamaMaissa (former IfA grad and now @UCSCscience postdoc). Adaptive optics images of 1,157 stars within 25 pc from the northern #RECONS sample.
March 22nd, 2022: Pictures of the Robo-AO-2 deformable mirror: a closeup showing actuator positions, and a long exposure image showing diffuse reflection from the two light sources. The later indicates the beam footprint on the surface (the UV beam, orange, is partially blocked for clarity).
March 16th, 2022: And now we move on to installing and aligning the deformable mirror.
March 16th, 2022: OAP #1 is now aligned in the system. In this photo, you can see the shadow of the telescope simulator pupil stop which mimics the UH2.2-m telescope pupil. The green beam of light is centered to within a 1/3 of a mm on the OAP and has a residual wavefront error of ~20 nm RMS.
March 11th, 2022: A first look at off-axis parabolic (OAP) mirror #1. This is the first powered optic in the optical relay that takes light from the telescope, directs the light through other optics, and ultimately forms images on the science camera detectors.
March 11th, 2022: The telescope simulator sub-system is now complete. The simulator mimics a real star, the artificial laser star at 10 km, and a precision on-sky grid. The simulated sources are imaged the way the real sources would be seen by the UH 2.2-m telescope.
February 28th, 2022: Our telescope simulator is now also producing a diverging UV beam that is co-axial with the collimated visible beam. The two beams act as the laser guide star at 10km away and a star infinitely far away, respectively.
February 18th, 2022: Our telescope simulator (used for aligning and calibrating the adaptive optics system) is now producing a collimated beam parallel to the optical bench.
February 9th, 2022:We’ve had the last delivery of carbon fiber stiffeners today. The large plate will keep the main breadboard from bending when the infrared camera is attached. And small stiffeners are being bonded to the telescope simulator bases to keep them from twisting.
February 3rd, 2022: Can you spot the differences? (Hint: N >= 1599)
January 10th 2022: And more hardware and cameras installed today. Next up, filter wheels.
January 6th, 2022: More hardware installed on the carbon fiber optical bench today. Note that we are testing all of the the mechanics before installing the precision optics. This helps us identify any missing fasteners and to find any issues that were not apparent in the CAD model.
