The DOSSA (Decentralization of Space Situational Awareness) project, led by SpaceAble in collaboration with Unistellar and the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, aims to enhance space surveillance through a collaborative effort involving amateur astronomers, researchers, and industrial networks, leveraging advanced technology and data collection to improve space situational awareness in an era of escalating satellite numbers. This project aims to create a comprehensive sky map of objects transiting around Earth. It benefits from a large dataset collected by the Unistellar telescope network, a global network comprised primarily of robotically controllable evScopes 1 and 2 telescopes, each featuring a 11.4 centimeter aperture diameter. We develop dedicated deep learning algorithms to account for the relatively compact diameters of the telescopes and to extend detection thresholds. Firstly, we use traditional convolutional neural networks (CNNs) based classifiers to detect images including a satellite streak, and secondly, we use UNet to identify pixels affected by such streaks. Both neural networks are trained on realistic simulations generated using our optical Fourier simulation software, by combining observed sky backgrounds and synthetic satellite streaks spanning a wide range of orbital parameters. With this strategy, we reach excellent performance on the segmentation of images in test set, with a recall of 79.6% pixels belonging to the satellites masks, at a false positive rate of 0.001%. For 90% of streak pixels recovered by the neural networks, we obtain a precision of 96.3% on the predicted satellite masks. This exceeds the performance of non-ML algorithms and paves the way to measuring accurate satellite positions over broader magnitudes ranges and down to lower S/N, in order to increase the precision on their orbital parameters.
As the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) nears operational status, the focus is made on maximizing its capabilities to produce the best possible images. Among other influential factors, the differential pistons – caused by the joint presence of spiders breaking the spatial continuity of the wavefront and low-order aberrations from various origins – significantly impact the overall image quality and must therefore be addressed. Our study is centered on utilizing Neural Networks (NN) to accurately estimate the ELT’s six differential pistons in the presence of turbulence residuals using a 2x2 Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SHWFS). The results of this work could be applied to instruments like HARMONI or MORFEO, which will be equipped with 2x2 SHWFS for their natural guide star wavefront sensing. In our earlier work, the use of ResNet networks fed with data covering all pupil/SHWFS rotation angles demonstrated success in piston estimation. In that study, a simplified atmospheric turbulence model was employed, consisting solely of turbulence residuals, implying perfect correction for frequencies below the deformable mirror’s cutoff frequency. In this paper, we propose to evaluate the network’s performance under more realistic atmospheric turbulence conditions relevant to the ELT. We show that the network can still extract differential piston information from single-frame images, while exhibiting increased uncertainty in its estimation. However, using 10-frame averaged images leads to a significant improvement in root mean square error (RMSE) performance. We conclude this work by addressing remaining open questions and outlining potential future research directions. These findings contribute to refining the NN models usage for cophasing applications, addressing alignment challenges, and enhancing ELT instrumentation performance.
The next generation of giant ground and space telescopes will have the light-collecting power to detect and characterize potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast imaging for the first time. This will only be achievable if the performance of the Giant Segment Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs) extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) systems are optimized to their full potential. A key component of an ExAO system is the wavefront sensor (WFS), which measures aberrations from atmospheric turbulence. A common choice in current and next-generation instruments is the pyramid wavefront sensor (PWFS). ExAO systems require high spatial and temporal sampling of wavefronts to optimize performance and, as a result, require large detectors for the WFS. We present a closed-loop testbed demonstration of a three-sided pyramid wavefront sensor (3PWFS) as an alternative to the conventional four-sided pyramid wavefront (4PWFS) sensor for GSMT-ExAO applications on the innovative comprehensive adaptive optics and coronagraph test instrument (CACTI). The 3PWFS is less sensitive to read noise than the 4PWFS because it uses fewer detector pixels. The 3PWFS has further benefits: a high-quality three-sided pyramid optic is easier to manufacture than a four-sided pyramid. We describe the design of the two components of the CACTI system, the adaptive optics simulator and the PWFS testbed that includes both a 3PWFS and 4PWFS. We detail the error budget of the CACTI system, review its operation and calibration procedures, and discuss its current status. A preliminary experiment was performed on CACTI to study the performance of the 3PWFS to the 4PWFS in varying strengths of turbulence using both the raw intensity and slopes map signal processing methods. This experiment was repeated for a modulation radius of 1.6 and 3.25 λ / D. We found that the performance of the two wavefront sensors is comparable if modal loop gains are tuned.
Extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) systems require high spatial and temporal sampling of wavefronts to optimize performance, and as a result, require large detectors for the wavefront sensor (WFS). We present a testbed demonstration of a three-sided pyramid wavefront sensor (3PWFS) as an alternative to the conventional four-sided pyramid wavefront sensor (4PWFS) for Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope ExAO applications. The 3PWFS is less sensitive to read noise than the 4PWFS because it uses fewer detector pixels. We describe the design of the Comprehensive Adaptive Optics and Coronagraph Test Instrument (CACTI). An experiment was performed on CACTI to determine the relative performance of the 3PWFS to the 4PWFS in varying strengths of turbulence using both the Raw Intensity and Slopes Map signal processing methods. We found that the performance of the two WFS is comparable if modal loop gains are tuned.
The Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs) including the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), all have extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) instruments planned that will use pyramid wavefront sensors (PWFS). The ExAO instruments all have common features: a high-actuator-count deformable mirror running at extreme speeds (>1 kHz); a high-performance wavefront sensor (WFS); and a high-contrast coronagraph. ExAO WFS performance is currently limited by the need for high spatial sampling of the wavefront which requires large detectors. For ExAO instruments for the next generation of telescopes, alternative architectures of WFS are under consideration because there is a trade-off between detector size, speed, and noise that reduces the performance of GSMT-ExAO wavefront control. One option under consideration for a GSMT-ExAO wavefront sensor is a three-sided PWFS (3PWFS). The 3PWFS creates three copies of the telescope pupil for wavefront sensing, compared to the conventional four-sided PWFS (4PWFS), which uses four pupils. The 3PWFS uses fewer detector pixels than the 4PWFS and should therefore be less sensitive to read noise. Here we develop a mathematical formalism based on the diffraction theory description of the Foucault knife-edge test that predicts the intensity pattern after the PWFS. Our formalism allows us to calculate the intensity in the pupil images formed by the PWFS in the presence of phase errors corresponding to arbitrary Fourier modes. We use these results to motivate how we process signals from a 3PWFS. We compare the raw intensity (RI) method, and derive the Slopes Maps (SM) calculation for the 3PWFS, which combines the three pupil images of the 3PWFS to obtain the X and Y slopes of the wavefront. We then use the Object Oriented MATLAB Adaptive Optics toolbox (OOMAO) to simulate an end-to-end model of an AO system using a PWFS with modulation and compare the performance of the 3PWFS to the 4PWFS. In the case of a low read noise detector, the Strehl ratios of the 3PWFS and 4PWFS are within 0.01. When we included higher read noise in the simulation, we found a Strehl ratio gain of 0.036 for the 3PWFS using RI over the 4PWFS using SM at a stellar magnitude of 10. At the same magnitude, the 4PWFS RI also outperformed the 4PWFS SM, but the gain was only 0.012 Strehl. This is significant because 4PWFS using SM is how the PWFS is conventionally used for AO wavefront sensing. We have found that the 3PWFS is a viable WFS that can fully reconstruct a wavefront and produce a stable closed-loop with correction comparable to that of a 4PWFS, with modestly better performance for high read-noise detectors.
Within the next decade the Extremely Large Telescopes [ELTs] with diameters up to 40m will see first light. To optimize a high contrast pyramid wavefront sensor for an ELT extreme adaptive optics system, we are developing the theoretical framework of a three-sided pyramid wavefront sensor (3PWFS). The 3PWFS should have a higher photon efficiency and therefore be more sensitive to wavefront aberrations than the traditional four-sided pyramid wavefront sensor (4PWFS) in the presence of noise. In this paper we present results from end-to-end simulations, and from test benches at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, and the University of Arizona.
We demonstrate numerically the phasing of a telescope with a primary segmented mirror consisting of 800 hexagonal segments using a pyramid wavefront sensor, supported by experiments. The segments are initially misaligned in piston/tip/tilt with median inter-segment steps of several micrometers. We simulate a mirror with some missing segments and a telescope spider with large optical phase discontinuities across its six vanes. The physical optics simulation is validated by experiments on the LOOPS optical bench at LAM. The correct combination of step solutions is selected by maximum likelihood methods. We emulate different star magnitudes and seeing conditions.
Laboratory Adaptive Optics (AO) benches are the backbone of experimental testing and verification of new AO designs and architectures. These testbeds are particularly important when exploring unknown factors in the development of new instruments and facilities like future extremely large telescope AO systems. One of the key elements for simulating the performance of such systems in a smaller scale laboratory environment is the ability of projecting the precise intensity mask on the pupil plane. This mask often has binary (black or transparent/reflective) patterns that mimic the secondary obscuration and spider design of the telescope. Precise implementation of such intensity masks on the bench is important since studying effects such as “island/petaling effect” are critically dependent on the correct down-scaling and precise representation of the spider structure. Using a physical mask for such an application is very difficult since manufacturing and installing such fine structure pieces are difficult and hard to use. It is also necessary to build a new physical mask for each telescope system or scale that is desired for the experiment. In this paper, we introduce two methods of using a phase only Liquid Crystal on Silicon Spatial Light Modulator (LCoS-SLM) device as an alternative option to precisely and relatively easily inject the custom intensity mask into an optical bench. By implementing these methods on the LOOPS bench AO facilities of the LAM, we demonstrated that the contrast produced by both methods could be better than 2% (dark/bright ratio), which is sufficient for representing pupil obscuration in the majority of applications. We also show that by using one of these methods, it is possible to inject phase and binary intensity mask simultaneously which could greatly increase the versatility and ease of use of an experimental AO setup.
The Sodium Laser Guide Star (LGS) is an elongated object in a 3D volume. This produces a significant elongation on many of the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor spots that the ELT instruments use for wavefront sensing. The Ingot Wavefront Sensor (I-WFS) has been proposed as a possible solution to deal with the 3D nature of the LGS. We developed an end-to-end numerical tool of the I-WFS to perform system analysis of a closed-loop complete system. We considered the generation of the input turbulence, deformable mirror definition and control, and, of course details, of the I-WFS. It needs a 3-Dimensional description to fully take into account the elongation effect across the vertical (propagation) axis. The I-WFS has been simulated similarly to the Pyramid Wavefront Sensor, as a combination of Foucault knife-edge sensors. In parallel to numerical simulations development, we had the opportunity to perform laboratory testing of the I-WFS at the LOOPS Adaptive Optics test bench (at LAM), using a Spatial Light Modulator. This device is able to produce a high definition phase mask that can mimic two-dimensional I-WFS behaviour. In this framework, we report a preliminary discussion both for the simulations and the closed-loop data analysis.
Wavefront sensors (WFSs) encode phase information of an incoming wavefront into an intensity pattern that can be measured on a camera. Several kinds of WFSs are used in astronomical adaptive optics. Among them, Fourier-based WFSs perform a filtering operation on the wavefront in the focal plane. The most well-known example of a WFS of this kind is the Zernike WFS. The pyramid WFS also belongs to this class. Based on this same principle, WFSs can be proposed, such as the n-faced pyramid (which ultimately becomes an axicon) or the flattened pyramid, depending on whether the image formation is incoherent or coherent. To test such concepts, the LAM/ONERA on-sky pyramid sensor (LOOPS) adaptive optics testbed hosted at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille has been upgraded by adding a spatial light modulator (SLM). This device, placed in a focal plane produces high-definition phase masks that mimic otherwise bulk optic devices. We first present the optical design and upgrades made to the experimental setup of the LOOPS bench. Then, we focus on the generation of the phase masks with the SLM and the implications of having such a device in a focal plane. Finally, we present the first closed-loop results in either static or dynamic mode with different WFS applied on the SLM.
SPEED (Segmented Pupil Experiment for Exoplanet Detection) is an instrumental testbed designed to offer an ideal cocoon to provide relevant solutions in both cophasing and high-contrast imaging with segmented telescopes. The next generation of observatories will be made of a primary mirror with excessive complexity (mirror segmentation, central obscuration, and spider vanes) undoubtedly known to be unfavorable for the direct detection of exoplanets. Exoplanets detection around late-type stars (M-dwarfs) constitutes an outstanding reservoir of candidates, and SPEED integrates all the recipes to pave the road for this science case (cophasing sensors, multi-DM wavefront control and shaping architecture as well as advanced coronagraphy). In this paper, we provide a progress overview of the project and report on the first light with segments cophasing control and monitoring from a coronagraphic image.
Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) are the next technological step when considering astrophysical observation. They will provide unprecedented angular resolution, thus improving the imaging capability and hopefully allow the imaging of the first Earth-like exoplanet. For technological and mechanical reasons, the primary mirror of these instruments will have to be segmented. To reach the image quality needed for the most demanding observational programs, the segments must be kept aligned below tens of nm RMS. The development of cophasing technics is of prime importance for the next generation of space- and ground-based segmented telescopes. We propose to describe in this paper a new focal plane cophasing sensor that exploits the scientific image of a coronagraphic instrument to retrieve simultaneously piston and tip-tilt misalignments. It is based on the self- coherent camera (SCC) principle and provides a non-invasive system and an efficient phasing sensor from the image domain. Numerical simulations have successfully demonstrated the proper functioning of this system and its algorithms. Along this, work to implement and test the self-coherent camera - phasing sensor (SCC-PS) is currently ongoing and a first look at the cophasing stage of the Segmented Pupil Experiment for Exoplanet Detection (SPEED) will be proposed.
The SPEED project - the Segmented Pupil Experiment for Exoplanet Detection - in development at the Lagrange laboratory, aims at gearing up strategies and technologies for high-contrast instrumentation with segmented telescopes. This new instrumental platform offers an ideal environment in which to make progress in the domain of ELTs and/or space-based missions with complex apertures. It combines all the required recipes (phasing optics, wavefront control/shaping, and advanced coronagraphy) to get to very close angular separation imaging. In this paper, we report on the optical design and subsystems advances and we provide a progress overview.
Searching for nearby exoplanets with direct imaging is one of the major scientific drivers for both space and groundbased programs. While the second generation of dedicated high-contrast instruments on 8-m class telescopes is about to greatly expand the sample of directly imaged planets, exploring the planetary parameter space to hitherto-unseen regions ideally down to Terrestrial planets is a major technological challenge for the forthcoming decades. This requires increasing spatial resolution and significantly improving high contrast imaging capabilities at close angular separations. Segmented telescopes offer a practical path toward dramatically enlarging telescope diameter from the ground (ELTs), or achieving optimal diameter in space. However, translating current technological advances in the domain of highcontrast imaging for monolithic apertures to the case of segmented apertures is far from trivial. SPEED – the segmented pupil experiment for exoplanet detection – is a new instrumental facility in development at the Lagrange laboratory for enabling strategies and technologies for high-contrast instrumentation with segmented telescopes. SPEED combines wavefront control including precision segment phasing architectures, wavefront shaping using two sequential high order deformable mirrors for both phase and amplitude control, and advanced coronagraphy struggled to very close angular separations (PIAACMC). SPEED represents significant investments and technology developments towards the ELT area and future spatial missions, and will offer an ideal cocoon to pave the road of technological progress in both phasing and high-contrast domains with complex/irregular apertures. In this paper, we describe the overall design and philosophy of the SPEED bench.
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