The current generation of Adaptive Optics systems has lead to an improvement in resolution and contrast of up to one to two orders of magnitude for 8-10 meter class telescopes. With the upcoming generation of Extremely Large Telescopes, AO has the potential for an even larger gain. But the scaling of the current AO systems to ELTs will not be trivial; both in AO hardware as well as in AO control, techniques need to be developed which can cope with the large number of sub-apertures. The Leiden High Order AO Testbed was developed for the implementation and testing of innovative ELT-compatible AO systems. In the current setup, the system is centered around a Liquid Crystal Spatial Light Modulator, a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor and a PC based RTC. Initially, the system will be used to develop and test efficient high-order AO algorithms under laboratory conditions, but is sufficiently flexible to allow for fast replacement of all components for the testing of different hardware components. In this paper we will present the design, building and testing of HORATIO.

Date Published: 28 June 2006
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 6272, Advances in Adaptive Optics II, 62724W (28 June 2006); doi: 10.1117/12.671615

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6272:
Advances in Adaptive Optics II
Brent L. Ellerbroek; Domenico Bonaccini Calia, Editor(s)