Solar adaptive optics systems for the New Vacuum Solar Telescope at the Fuxian Lake Solar Observatory

Adaptive optics(AO)is essential for high-quality ground-based observations with large telescopes because it counters the impact of wavefront aberrations caused by atmospheric turbulence.The new vacuum solar telescope(NVST)is one of the most important high-resolution solar observation instruments in the world.Three sets of solar adaptive optics systems have been developed and installed on this telescope:conventional adaptive optics,ground layer adaptive optics,and multi-conjugate adaptive optics.These have been in operation from 2018 to 2023.This paper details the development and application of solar adaptive optics on the NVST and discusses the newest instrumentation.

EAST-Educational Adaptive-optics Solar Telescope

For the public having a better understanding of solar activities,the Educational Adaptive-optics Solar Telescope(EAST)was built in July 2021 and is located at the Shanghai Astronomy Museum.The EAST consists of a 65 cm aperture solar telescope with a 177-element adaptive optics system and two-channel high resolution imaging system at the Hαand TiO bands,in addition to three full disk solar telescopes at CaK,Hαand TiO bands equipped on the tube of the main telescope.In this paper,the configuration of the EAST is described.Its performance and on-sky observational results are presented.The EAST,to our knowledge,is the most advanced solar telescope for the popularization of science in the world.Due to its excellent performance,the data acquired by the EAST can also be used for research on solar physics and space weather prediction.

Ground-layer adaptive optics for the New Vacuum Solar Telescope:Instrument description and first results

Ground-layer adaptive optics(GLAO)has shown its potential for use in solar observation owing to its wide field-of-view(FOV)correction.A high-order GLAO system that consists of a multiple direction Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor(WFS),a realtime controller with a multi-CPU processor,and a 151-element deformable mirror was developed for the 1-m New Vacuum Solar Telescope at Yunnan Observatories,Chinese Academy of Sciences.A hexagonal microlens with 9×8 subapertures is employed in the WFS.The detection FOV is 42′′×37′′,in which 9(3×3)guide regions are extracted for multiple direction wavefront sensing with a frame rate of up to 2200 Hz.To our knowledge,this is the first professional solar GLAO system used as a regularly operating instrument for scientific observations.Its installation and adjustment were performed in the summer of 2021.In this article,a detailed account of the GLAO system and its first light results and a comprehensive analysis of the performance of the GLAO system are provided.The results show that this system can effectively improve the imaging quality after compensating for the wavefront aberration due to ground-layer turbulence.

First light of the 1.8-m solar telescope–CLST

Large-aperture solar telescopes play an important role in solar observations and research,and require high temporal and spatial resolution[1].To solve some fundamental problems such as the solar dynamo,coronal heating,and the triggering of major solar eruptions,the spatial resolution for solar-atmosphere observation should reach at least 0.1 arcsec[2].

First light of solar multi-conjugate adaptive optics at the 1-m new vacuum solar telescope

Observations play a leading role in any branches of astronomy,including solar physics.In order to solve fundamental problems,such as solar dynamo[1],coronal heating[2]and the triggering of major solar eruptions[3],solar observations with spatial resolution better than 0.1 arcsec are required.Such a goal cannot be achieved without the help of adaptive optics(AO),which eliminates the wavefront distortion caused by atmosphere turbulence[4,5].However,solar observations are performed over an extended field of