CANARY phase B: on-sky open-loop tomographic LGS AO results

Abstract

CANARY is an on-sky Laser Guide Star (LGS) tomographic AO demonstrator that has been in operation at the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma since 2010. In 2013, CANARY was upgraded from its initial configuration that used three off-axis Natural Guide Stars (NGS) through the inclusion of four off-axis Rayleigh LGS and associated wavefront sensing system. Here we present the system and analysis of the on-sky results obtained at the WHT between May and September 2014. Finally we present results from the final ‘Phase C’ CANARY system that aims to recreate the tomographic configuration to emulate the expected tomographic AO configuration of both the AOF at the VLT and E-ELT.