First laboratory and on-sky results of an adaptive secondary mirror with TNO-style actuators on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility

TL;DR

This paper reports the first on-sky demonstration of an adaptive secondary mirror using TNO-style actuators, showing promising performance improvements for astronomical adaptive optics systems.

Contribution

It introduces a new adaptive secondary mirror with TNO hybrid actuators and presents initial laboratory and on-sky results demonstrating its effectiveness.

Findings

Achieved stable closed-loop performance on-sky

H-band Strehl ratios of 35-40% under various conditions

Demonstrated potential for improved efficiency and robustness

Abstract

We are developing an adaptive secondary mirror (ASM) that uses a new actuator technology created by the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). The TNO hybrid variable reluctance actuators have more than an order of magnitude better efficiency over the traditional voice coil actuators that have been used on existing ASMs and show potential for improving the long-term robustness and reliability of ASMs. To demonstrate the performance, operations, and serviceability of TNO's actuators in an observatory, we have developed a 36-actuator prototype ASM for the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) called IRTF-ASM-1. IRTF-ASM-1 provides the first on-sky demonstration of this approach and will help us evaluate the long-term performance and use of this technology in an astronomical facility environment. We present calibration and performance results with the ASM in a Meniscus Hindle Sphere lens setup as well as preliminary on-sky results on IRTF. IRTF-ASM-1 achieved stable closed-loop performance on-sky with H-band Strehl ratios of 35-40% in long-exposure images under a variety of seeing conditions.