Enhancing the Capability of Future Medium-size Telescopes: First Light of the SALTO Demonstrator

Abstract

The adaptive optics (AO) technology is crucial to achieve the full potential of ground-based telescopes. Over the last three decades, the world has witnessed the successful advent and operation of AO systems on large ground-based telescopes. The complexity and cost of AO systems have largely gone down in the last decade thanks to advances in deformable mirror, wavefront sensor, and real-time computing technologies. Here, we present a robust Rayleigh scattered laser-guided single conjugated adaptive optics system called SALTO, which was designed, built, and tested in the Belgian countryside on a 1-meter class telescope. This project aims to demonstrate the possibility of rejuvenating the scientific goals of medium-class telescopes (1-3 m) with AO technology, as well as to enable optical telecommunication from relatively poor observing sites. This paper discusses the overview of the design, integration and calibration of SALTO. It concludes with the presentation of successful on-sky results at 1.55 μm under 2-3" seeing.