BRUTE, PSF Reconstruction for the SOUL pyramid-based Single Conjugate Adaptive Optics facility of the LBT

TL;DR

The paper presents BRUTE, a PSF reconstruction algorithm for the LBT's SOUL adaptive optics system, using wavefront telemetry data to generate accurate instantaneous PSFs without complex transfer functions.

Contribution

Introduces BRUTE, a novel PSF reconstruction method that relies solely on telemetry data and calibrations, simplifying the process for the LBT's adaptive optics system.

Findings

Effective in laboratory and nighttime tests

Adapts to different guide star magnitudes and seeing conditions

Provides accurate instantaneous PSFs without transfer functions

Abstract

The astronomical applications greatly benefit from the knowledge of the instrument PSF. We describe the PSF Reconstruction algorithm developed for the LBT LUCI instrument assisted by the SOUL SCAO module. The reconstruction procedure considers only synchronous wavefront sensor telemetry data and a few asynchronous calibrations. We do not compute the Optical Transfer Function and corresponding filters. We compute instead a temporal series of wavefront maps and for each of these the corresponding instantaneous PSF. We tested the algorithm both in laboratory arrangement and in the nighttime for different SOUL configurations, adapting it to the guide star magnitudes and seeing conditions. We nick-named it "BRUTE", Blind Reconstruction Using TElemetry, also recalling the one-to-one approach, one slope-to one instantaneous PSF the algorithm applies.