PAPYRUS is a project proposed and led by post-doctorates and PhD students from the R&D team at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille which consists of designing and integrating an Adaptive Optics (AO) system on the 152cm Telescope of Observatoire de Haute Provence (OHP). This system will be equipped with a Pyramid wavefront- sensor which belongs to the very promising class of Fourier-Filtering wavefront-sensors. This project has three main purposes:
- Pedagogic outreach: This system will be used by student who participate to Master 2 laboratory classes and summer schools at OHP. The Pyramid wavefront sensor will be the preferred sensor for the next generation of AO systems and our system will represent a unique possibility for these students to get familiar with such a sensor using valuable on sky data. To our knowledge, such an on-sky pedagogic device doesn’t exist in the world.
- Research & Development on the Pyramid wavefront sensor: This system will be perfect opportunity for the team to concretize and improve its competences on this device in two aspects: First of all, the practical integration on the telescope will be a way to bring priceless skills to the team. On the other hand, when fully operational, our Pyramid wavefront sensor system will be used to test control algorithms and data processing techniques developed recently at LAM.
- Scientific goals: It will allow astronomers to use the T-152 with the benefits of AO corrected images.
30 years after the first astronomical AO corrected pictures provided at OHP by the COME-ON system, the goal is to build a simple and user-friendly AO system with a strong modularity that will push our understanding of the Pyramid wavefront sensor behavior on a real telescope, and provide easily accessible diffraction limited observational capabilities.
