Improved Image Quality Over 10' Fields with the `Imaka Ground Layer Adaptive Optics Experiment

TL;DR

The `Imaka` GLAO system on the UH 2.2m telescope significantly improves image quality over a wide field, reducing PSF size by 1.5-1.7 times and demonstrating uniform, stable correction suitable for detailed astronomical studies.

Contribution

This work presents the first large-field GLAO demonstration with `Imaka`, achieving uniform, stable AO correction over 24'x18' and correlating image quality with telemetry and seeing measurements.

Findings

Median FWHM reduced by 1.5-1.7 times with AO

AO-on PSF is uniform and 10x more stable in time

Image quality correlates with telemetry and seeing data

Abstract

`Imaka is a ground layer adaptive optics (GLAO) demonstrator on the University of Hawaii 2.2m telescope with a 24'x18' field-of-view, nearly an order of magnitude larger than previous AO instruments. In 15 nights of observing with natural guide star asterisms ~16' in diameter, we measure median AO-off and AO-on empirical full-widths at half-maximum (FWHM) of 0''95 and 0''64 in R-band, 0''81 and 0''48 in I-band, and 0''76 and 0''44 at 1 micron. This factor of 1.5-1.7 reduction in the size of the point spread function (PSF) results from correcting both the atmosphere and telescope tracking errors. The AO-on PSF is uniform out to field positions ~5' off-axis, with a typical standard deviation in the FWHM of 0''018. Images exhibit variation in FWMM by 4.5% across the field, which has been applied as a correction to the aforementioned quantities. The AO-on PSF is also 10x more stable in time compared to the AO-off PSF. In comparing the delivered image quality to proxy measurements, we find that in both AO-off and AO-on data, delivered image quality is correlated with `imaka's telemetry, with R-band correlation coefficients of 0.68 and 0.70, respectively. At the same wavelength, the data are correlated to DIMM and MASS seeing with coefficients of 0.45 and 0.55. Our results are an essential first step to implementing facility-class, wide-field GLAO on Maunakea telescopes, enabling new opportunities to study extended astronomical sources, such as deep galaxy fields, nearby galaxies or star clusters, at high angular resolution.