Abstract
The Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) built by ESO with the contribution of two external consortia is a powerful test bench for proving the feasibility of Multi-Conjugate (MCAO) and Ground Layer Adaptive Optics (GLAO) techniques both in the laboratory and on the sky. MAD is based on a two deformable mirrors correction system and on two multi-reference wavefront sensors (Star Oriented and Layer Oriented) capable to observe simultaneously some pre-selected configurations of Natural Guide Stars. MAD corrects up to 2 arcmin field of view in K band. After a long laboratory test phase, it has been installed at the VLT and it successfully performed on-sky demonstration runs on several astronomical targets for evaluating the correction performance under different atmospheric turbulence conditions. In this paper we present the results obtained on the sky in Star Oriented mode for MCAO and GLAO configurations and we correlate them with different atmospheric turbulence parameters. Finally we compare some of the on-sky results with numerical simulations including real turbulence profile measured at the moment of the observations.
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