NAOMI adaptive optics system for the 4.2-m William Herschel telescope

Abstract

NAOMI (Nasmyth Adaptive Optics for Multi-purpose Instrumentation) is a recently completed and commissioned astronomical facility on the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope. The system is designed to work initially with Natural Guide Stars and also to be upgradeable for use with a single laser guide star. It has been designed to work with both near infrared and optical instrumentation (both imagers and spectrographs). The system uses a linearised segmented adaptive mirror and dual-CCD Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor together with a multiple-DSP real-time processing system. Control system parameters can be updated on-the-fly by monitoring processes and the system can self-optimize its base optical figure to compensate for the optical characteristics of attached scientific instrumentation. The scientific motivation, consequent specification and implementation of NAOMI are described, together with example performance data and information on future upgrades and instrumentation.