Development of multi-conjugate adaptive optics system for monitoring of solar system planets

Abstract

We are developing a multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) system for monitoring observations of the solar system planets. The current goal of this MCAO system is a moderate improvement of spatial resolution (several tenths of an arcsecond) of the planetary image over about 50-arcsec field of view in the visible wavelength (0.5–1 µm) for 1.5-m class telescopes (1.6-m Pirka telescope of Hokkaido University and 1.5-m Kanata telescope of Hiroshima University) at moderate seeing (1–2 arcsec) sites in Japan. The system has two 140-element MEMS deformable mirrors, which conjugate the telescope pupil and 2.6 km altitude, and four 11×11-subaperture ShackHartmann wavefront sensors with a field of view of about 16 × 16 arcsec. The wavefronts would be measured by the correlation tracking of the patterns on the planet such as the clouds of Jupiter, as similar in the solar adaptive optics systems. The system have been mostly constructed and is currently being tested in the laboratory, and we are planning test observations in 2021. We describe the design, construction, expected performance, and current status of our MCAO system for continuous planetary imaging.