Enhanced seeing mode: at the LBT Observatory: earlier results verified via simulations

Abstract

The Single conjugated adaptive Optics Upgrade for LBT (SOUL) Adaptive Optics System at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO), in conjunction with the N30 camera on the LBT Utility Camera in the Infrared (LUCI) instruments, delivers diffraction-limited image quality with a 30”x30” field of view. Full AO offers diffraction limited correction, which corrects up to 500 Karhunen–Loève (KL) modes at up to 1.7KHz, but anisoplanitism effects limit the usable field of view. The SOUL system also includes a low-order mode for delivering only 10 modes of correction (tip, tilt, focus, 2 x astigmatism, 2 x coma, 2 x trefoil and spherical) to remove jitter low-order aberrations. This form of operation is referred to as Enhanced Seeing mode (ESM). ESM runs at 100-600 Hz, to correct for low-order aberrations and tip-tilt jitter, which significantly improves angular resolution across the full 4’x4’ field of view of the wide field, N3.75 camera on the LUCI instruments. In this paper, we will compare the results of simulations with ESM observations already published; further demonstrating the superb quality of ESM observations at the LBTO.