The MICADO first light imager for the ELT: the PSF Reconstruction Software

TL;DR

The paper discusses the development and testing of a PSF reconstruction software for MICADO, the first-light camera of the ESO ELT, demonstrating its accuracy in reconstructing PSFs for imaging and morphological analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a new PSF reconstruction software for MICADO, validated on VLT data, and confirms its suitability for high-precision astronomical imaging.

Findings

PSF-R achieves a few percent accuracy on on-axis PSFs.

Off-axis PSF reconstruction is within 10-15% accuracy.

The software pipeline is verified with the latest ESO data processing system.

Abstract

MICADO is the first-light camera of the ESO ELT, allowing NIR imaging and long-slit spectroscopy assisted by adaptive optics. MICADO is now entering its construction phase, and the software for data reduction is reaching an adequate maturity level. The PSF Reconstruction (PSF-R) of MICADO is a software tool for the blind derivation of the PSF, only using adaptive optics telemetry data. An update of the status of the PSF-R service is provided here. The PSF-R prototype has been tested on ERIS@VLT data in order to check the reconstruction of on- and off-axis PSFs. The on-axis PSF-R is accurate at a few percent level on Strehl, FWHM, Encircled Energy, and half light radius, while for the off-axis case the match is within 10-15 percent at a distance of half isoplanatic angle. The first version of the workflow for the PSF-R pipeline has been developed and verified using the latest release of the ESO data processing system. A set of simulations has been implemented on the morphological analysis of distant galaxies, showing that the accuracy of the PSF-R matches the goals needed to study their morphology. In summary, the PSF-R team is on the right track towards the ELT first light.