Design, implementation, and on-sky performance of an advanced apochromatic triplet atmospheric dispersion corrector for the Magellan adaptive optics system and VisAO camera

TL;DR

This paper details the design, laboratory testing, and on-sky performance of an advanced triplet atmospheric dispersion corrector for the Magellan adaptive optics system, significantly improving correction accuracy over conventional designs for visible wavelength astronomy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel triplet ADC design that enhances atmospheric dispersion correction, with laboratory verification and successful on-sky implementation in the MagAO system.

Findings

57% improvement in geometric rms spot size at 2 airmasses

33% improvement in encircled energy at 20 arcsec radius

62% improvement in Strehl ratio compared to doublet ADC

Abstract

We present the novel design, laboratory verification, and on-sky performance of our advanced triplet atmospheric dispersion corrector (ADC), an important component of the Magellan Adaptive Optics system (MagAO), which recently achieved first light in December 2012. High-precision broadband (0.5-1.0 microns) atmospheric dispersion correction at visible wavelengths is essential both for wavefront sensing (WFS) on fainter guide stars, and for performing visible AO science using our VisAO science camera. At 2 airmasses (60 degrees from zenith) and over the waveband 500-1000 nm, our triplet design produces a 57% improvement in geometric rms spot size, a 33% improvement in encircled energy at 20 arcsec radius, and a 62% improvement in Strehl ratio when compared to a conventional doublet design. This triplet design has been fabricated, tested in the lab, and integrated into the MagAO WFS and the VisAO science camera. We present on-sky results of the ADC in operation with the MagAO system. We also present a zero-beam-deviation triplet ADC design, which will be important to future AO systems that require precise alignment of the optical axis over a large range of airmasses in addition to diffraction-limited broadband dispersion correction.