July 2011 – Page 2 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

This week we finished the optical alignment in the optical lab. We also mounted the NAS on the tower as a test. Then we pulled the NAS off the tower and mounted all the optics into the the NAS for the first time. Then we aligned the flowerpot (calibration point source) to the NAS and the board to the the flowerpot. See photos below

Laird bolting board on NASThe optical board on the NAS (flowerpot at top with calibration source)

A well aligned PWFS

The Pyramid Wavefront Sensor (PWFS) Aligned in the lab to the White Light Source

The PWFS is now aligned on the bench. In the image you can see to the right a single frame of the CCD39 showing a flat wavefront with a slight tilt from our lamp source. On the left you an see the diffraction-limited image of the source on our VisAO camera in r’ band (resolution of 18 milliarcsec on the sky).An r’ band image of the lamp and its “flat” wavefront on the PWFS

Magellan AO Wavefront Sensor and VisAO camera

Here is the current view of the, almost complete, integration of the wavefront sensor, VisAO camera, and their electronics and control computers. Derek Kopon (right) is working on the alignment of the optics and Jared Males (left) is working on the software.

Wavefront Sensor (below Jared), CCD electronics box (on top of bench), VisAO camera electronics box (below bench)alignment fiber (flower pot), with VisAO camera and wavefront sensor behind

Magellan AO software

Thanks to the hard work of Jared Males and Alfio and Luca the control software is quickly coming together. In this screenshot we can see: (left to right) the Magellan TCS simulation GUI, the Master AO control GUI, the AO Hardware GUI (running 25 hardware subsystems of the AO system –with the CCD47 selected), the CCD39 real-time viewer GUI (showing the PWFS slopes), the VisAO camera control hardware GUI (running 7 hardware subsystems –with CCD47 selected), and finally the VisAO camera real-time display GUI. At this point almost all the functionality needed to close the AO loop has been obtained.The Magellan AO control and engineering GUIs

Stop that Mirror

Our mirror in the test tower with its new pupil stop. This is a delrin cap which was bolted on the “tenet” by Derek and then we added a precision mask to give a 0.29 central obscuration.