PhD students' seminar: Amal ZIDI

PhD students' seminar given by Amal ZIDI from the group Imaging and Information, on 07 April 2022 at 1.15pm in the auditorium of the Institut d'Optique in Palaiseau (and by videoconference) on the topic: "Adaptive optics control of the 1st light ELT instrument MICADO: first results."

Abstract: "Adaptive Optics (AO) enables to compensate in real time the disturbances affecting the acquisition of astronomical images. My PhD thesis deals with the narrow-field mode of the AO system of MICADO, the first-light imaging instrument for the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT, 39 m diameter). MICADO is a near-infrared camera with spectroscopic capabilities working near the telescope resolution limit. The development of the narrow-field AO mode is led by LESIA (Observatoire de Paris-Meudon) who co-supervise my PhD.

Without an efficient AO control, both the windshake affecting the ELT's huge structure and mechanical vibrations will deteriorate in an unacceptable way the performance of MICADO. These disturbances affect mainly the so-called tip and tilt optical modes. I will show that the standard integrator control cannot properly compensate these disturbances. I will present the design of a high-performance controller for these two low-order modes together with the first results obtained in various conditions."