Performance and Results of the NAOS Visible Wavefront Sensor

The Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System (NAOS) was installed in December 2001 on the Nasmyth focus of the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT). It includes two wavefront sensors: one operates at IR wavelengths, the other at visible wavelengths. This paper describes the NAOS visible wavefront sensor based on a Shack-Hartmann principle. This wavefront sensor unit includes: 1) A continuous flow liquid nitrogen cryostat and a low noise fast readout CCD camera controlled by the ESO new generation CCD system FIERA using a fast frame rate EEV/Marconi CCD-50. This 128×128 pixels split frame transfer device has a readout noise of 3 ē at 50 Kpix/sec/port. FIERA provides remotely controlled readout modes with optional binning, windowing and flexible integration time. 2) Two remotely exchangeable micro-lens arrays (14×14 and 7×7 micro-lenses) cooled to the CCD temperature (−100 °C). The CCD array is directly located in the micro lenses focal plane, only a few millimeters apart without any relay optics. Additional opto-mechanical functions are also provided (atmospheric dispersion compensator, flux level control, field of view limitation). On-sky performances of the wavefront sensor are presented. Adaptive optics corrections were obtained with a reference star as faint as visible magnitude 17. The maximum achievable band-path is 35 Hz at 0 dB for the open loop transfer function.