2000•Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIERequires access
Thermal performance and facility seeing at the upgraded 3.8-m UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT)
T. G. Hawarden, A. J. Adamson, Timothy C. Chuter, Nicholas P. Rees, R. Massey, Charles P. Cavedoni, Eli Ettedgui-Atad
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Abstract
The upgraded 3.8 m UK Infrared Telescope employs active control of the primary mirror figure and secondary mirror alignment to constrain intrinsic wavefront errors, currently to approximately 180 nm, while a fast guider controls a tip- tilt secondary to remove telescope vibrations and tracking errors. It routinely produces images with FWHM below 0.'5 at 2.2 micrometers wavelength (the K-band). The best fully-sampled image yet recorded has FWHM equals 0.'171 and is believed still to be the best ever achieved by a ground-based telescope without the use of higher-order adaptive optics.