Extragalactic Fields Optimized for Adaptive Optics

TL;DR

This paper identifies optimal extragalactic sky regions with high stellar density and low extinction for adaptive optics follow-up, proposing a figure of merit to evaluate AO performance and demonstrating potential efficiency gains over existing deep fields.

Contribution

The paper provides a catalog of 67 optimal sky patches for adaptive optics and introduces a figure of merit to assess AO performance in these fields.

Findings

Identified 67 optimal sky patches for adaptive optics observations.

Proposed a figure of merit to quantify adaptive optics performance.

Showed that observations in these fields could be significantly more efficient.

Abstract

In this paper we present the coordinates of 67 55' x 55' patches of sky which have the rare combination of both high stellar surface density (>0.5 arcmin^{-2} with 13<R<16.5 mag) and low extinction (E(B-V)<0.1). These fields are ideal for adaptive-optics based follow-up of extragalactic targets. One region of sky, situated near Baade's Window, contains most of the patches we have identified. Our optimal field, centered at RA: 7h24m3s, Dec: -1deg27'15", has an additional advantage of being accessible from both hemispheres. We propose a figure of merit for quantifying real-world adaptive optics performance, and use this to analyze the performance of multi-conjugate adaptive optics in these fields. We also compare our results to those that would be obtained in existing deep fields. In some cases adaptive optics observations undertaken in the fields given in this paper would be orders of magnitude more efficient than equivalent observations undertaken in existing deep fields.