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Keck All-Sky Precision AO (KAPA)

KAPA will upgrade the Keck AO system for laser-tomographic AO (to improve the image quality), add IR tip-tilt sensing (to increase sky coverage), and add facility-class PSF reconstruction (to increase the science return). KAPA will be commissioned in 2023. The Project Scientist is Prof. Jessica Lu and members of the Moving Universe Lab are working on many aspects of the project. The PI is Dr. Peter Wizinowich (Keck).

Keck PSF Reconstruction

Goal: Provide point spread function (PSF) estimates for each point in the science field for all NGS and LGS AO science observations taken with NIRC2 and OSIRIS on Keck.

AIROPA Project: We are developing PSF-reconstruction techniques that better capture the spatial variability of the AO PSF.

Papers:

• The AIROPA software package: milestones for testing general relativity in the strong gravity regime with AO (Witzel et al., 2016, SPIE)

• Point spread function determination for Keck adaptive optics (Ragland et al., 2016, SPIE)

• Off-axis PSF reconstruction for integral field spectrograph: instrumental aberrations and application to Keck/OSIRIS data (Ciurlo et al, 2018, SPIE)

• Status of point spread function determination for Keck adaptive optics (Ragland et al., 2018, SPIE)

• Point-spread function reconstruction for integral-field spectrograph data (Ciurlo et al., 2018, SPIE)

• Off-axis point spread function characterization in laser guide star adaptive optics systems (Beltramo-Martin et al., 2018, MNRAS)

• AIROPA II: Modeling Instrumental Aberrations for Off-Axis Point Spread Functions in Adaptive Optics (Ciurlo et al., submitted, JATIS)

• AIROPA III: Testing Off-Axis PSF Reconstruction with Simulated and On-Sky Data (Turri et al., submitted, JATIS)

Keck AO Performance Characterization and Prediction

Goal: Using big data sets from Keck AO, understand what factors effect the AO performance and what hardware or operational procedures can be improved. These same data can be used to predict AO performance using machine learning algorithms.

Papers:

• Analyzing long-term performance of the Keck-II adaptive optics system (Ramey et al. 2020, SPIE)

• Analyzing long-term performance of the Keck-II adaptive optics system (Ramey et al. submitted, JATIS)

Keck AO Precision Calibration Unit (PCU)

Goal: Build a new precision calibration unit for the Keck I and Keck II telescopes that includes a pinhole mask used for frequent calibrations of the geometric distortion solution. This will improve our astrometric accuracy by >5x. Prof. Lu is the PI and the PCU is being built in the Moving Universe Lab for delivery to Keck in Fall 2021.