Subaru Telescope 2.0

Key Instruments > Ultra-wide Laser Tomographic Imager and MOS with AO for Transcendent Exploration (ULTIMATE-Subaru)

Ultra-wide Laser Tomographic Imager and MOS with AO for Transcendent Exploration (ULTIMATE-Subaru)

Ultra-wide Laser Tomographic Imager and MOS with AO for Transcendent Exploration(ULTIMATE-Subaru)

ULTIMATE-Subaru project will implement a next-generation adaptive optics (AO) system to correct the effects of atmospheric turbulence on stellar images for a wide field of view.

The Ground Layer Adaptive Optics (GLAO) system, which improves star images by correcting the effect of the atmospheric turbulence near the ground surface, provides a much wider field of view (up to 14 arcminutes × 14 arcminutes) than previous AO systems.

The laser guide star system with four laser beams and multiple wavefront sensors, extracts the atmospheric turbulence in the layers close to the ground. The effect is corrected for a wide field of view by the deformable mirror installed on the telescope's secondary mirror (Adaptive Secondary Mirror), which is controlled with a short timescale. The GLAO system enables us to obtain stellar images of 0.2 arcseconds comparable with those obtained with space telescopes.

ULTIMATE-Subaru is developed by an international collaboration with Tohoku University, University of Tokyo, Australian National University (ANU), and Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA).

Keywords

The Ground Layer Adaptive Optics (GLAO) system provides a wide field of view observations.

The laser guide star system has four laser beams and multiple wavefront sensors

Adaptive Secondary Mirror for GLAO