ARGOS

Advanced Rayleigh guided Ground layer adaptive Optics System

Short Description:

ARGOS is the Laser Guide Star adaptive optics system for the Large Binocular Telescope. Aiming for a wide field adaptive optics correction, ARGOS will equip both sides of LBT with a multi laser beacon system and corresponding wavefront sensors, driving LBT's adaptive secondary mirrors. Utilizing high power pulsed green lasers, the artificial beacons are generated via Rayleigh scattering in earth's atmosphere. ARGOS will project a set of three guide stars above each of LBT's mirrors in a wide constellation. The returning scattered light, sensitive particular to the turbulence close to ground, is detected in a gated wavefront sensor system. Measuring and correcting the ground layers of the optical distortions enables ARGOS to achieve a correction over a very wide field of view. Taking advantage of this wide field correction, the science that can be done with the multi object spectrographs LUCI will be boosted by higher spatial resolution and strongly enhanced flux for spectroscopy.

Project Type:

Instrumentation for ground-based telescope

MPE Participation:

  • projekt management (PI)
  • laser systems
  • detectors
  • optical shutter
  • system technique

Status:

both laser boxes mounted at telescope

latest news: project web pages

Links:

MPE ARGOS pages

LUCI

Large Binocular Telescope (LBT)

Infrared/Submillimeter Astronomy (web pages of the MPE department involved in the project)

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