Bringing SOUL on sky
Enrico Pinna, Fabio Rossi, Alfio Puglisi, Guido Agapito, Marco, Bonaglia, Cedric Plantet, Tommaso Mazzoni, Runa Briguglio, Luca Carbonaro,, Marco Xompero, Paolo Grani, Armando Riccardi, Simone Esposito, Phil Hinz,, Amali Vaz, Steve Ertel, Oscar M. Montoya, Oliver Durney

TL;DR
The SOUL project enhances LBT's adaptive optics by upgrading SCAO systems with EMCCD detectors, enabling fainter guide stars and paving the way for future ELT systems with advanced technologies.
Contribution
This paper reports the first implementation and commissioning results of the SOUL upgrade, integrating pyramid WFS, adaptive secondary, and EMCCD detectors for improved AO performance.
Findings
Guide star limit improved to about 4 magnitudes fainter.
Successful daytime testing and initial commissioning results.
Demonstration of key technologies for future ELT AO systems.
Abstract
The SOUL project is upgrading the 4 SCAO systems of LBT, pushing the current guide star limits of about 2 magnitudes fainter thanks to Electron Multiplied CCD detector. This improvement will open the NGS SCAO correction to a wider number of scientific cases from high contrast imaging in the visible to extra-galactic source in the NIR. The SOUL systems are today the unique case where pyramid WFS, adaptive secondary and EMCCD are used together. This makes SOUL a pathfinder for most of the ELT SCAO systems like the one of GMT, MICADO and HARMONI of E-ELT, where the same key technologies will be employed. Today we have 3 SOUL systems installed on the telescope in commissioning phase. The 4th system will be installed in a few months. We will present here the results achieved during daytime testing and commissioning nights up to the present date.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsAdaptive optics and wavefront sensing · Astronomy and Astrophysical Research · CCD and CMOS Imaging Sensors
