The closed-loop correction must be carry out before observation of Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) to eliminate the low-frequency errors. A natural guide star S-H sensor in the focal plane of LAMOST is used to conduct wave-front sensing. The designed limiting magnitude of the S-H sensor is 10th magnitude, and the beacon must be located in the center of field of view, or slightly deviated from the center. The survey time of LAMOST is 2 hours before and after transit, wherefore the active optical correction should be completed within half of an hour, so it is necessary to make the wave-front sensing time as short as possible. Since the magnitude of guide star and atmospheric seeing have important effect on the efficiency of wave-front sensing, 9th magnitude or brighter stars are adopted in operation. For 9th magnitude stars, sky coverage will be about 100%, but at most of time, the beacons are not located in the center of field of view, so we propose to design a laser guide system based on Rayleigh scattering to provide a beacon whose brightness is equivalent to a 7th or 8th magnitude star and to launch the beacon in the center of field of view at any observational sky. In this paper, we describe the optical design of the implementation involved a laser system with 532nm in wavelength, beam diagnostics, a launch telescope with 350mm in diameter, and receiving system.

Date Published: 22 July 2014
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9145, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, 91453Z (22 July 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2055810

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9145:
Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V
Larry M. Stepp; Roberto Gilmozzi; Helen J. Hall, Editor(s)