A testing facility for AO on-sky demonstrations at the Copernico's Telescope within the ADONI framework

TL;DR

This paper describes the development of a dedicated on-sky testing facility at the Copernico Telescope for adaptive optics systems, enabling direct testing of innovative AO concepts on the sky within the ADONI framework.

Contribution

It introduces a new on-sky testing facility at the Copernico Telescope, including its opto-mechanical design and integration for adaptive optics demonstrations.

Findings

Successful design and implementation of the opto-mechanical system.

Verification of stability and alignment of the optical setup.

Facility readiness for on-sky adaptive optics testing.

Abstract

In the context of ADONI - the ADaptive Optics National laboratory of INAF - we are arranging for a facility, accessible to the AO community, in which visiting multi-purpose instrumentation, e.g. systems and prototypes of innovative AO concepts, may be directly tested on sky. The facility is located at the 182cm Copernico telescope in Asiago, the largest telescope in Italy, at its Coude focus, for which refurbishment activities are carried out, given that this focus was initially foreseen in the design, but never implemented and used till today. The facility hosts a laboratory where specialized visiting AO instrumentation may be properly accommodated on an optical bench for on-sky demonstrations. We present the current status of the facility, describing the opto-mechanical design implemented at the telescope that allows to redirect the light toward the Coude focus, the tests on the opto-mechanics carried on for stability verification, the integration of the optical and mechanical components within the preexisting structure.