Abstract

PSF reconstruction is a ”holy grail” of (astronomical) adaptive optics (AO) instrumentation. Since the (one?) successful implementation for a curvature system of Veran et al. [5] (from now on JPV) many tried to implement PSF retrieval on AO supported instrumentation. From the astronomical community these efforts likely are perceived as an unsatisfying success so far particularly since no observatory to our knowledge has reached a comparable level of AO telemetry data handling as is standard for the direct scientific data. Since AO is key for ELTs this should change in a not too far future. Even though more than one and a half decades ago, the PSF retrieval implementation of JPV for PUEO/CFHT is still the encouraging example and light tower. Technical reasons for the ”viscosity” encountered by many others might be that curvature systems are indeed much more favorable for PSF retrieval, but it might be as well simply the lack of having dedicated and knowledgeable manpower on PSF retrieval and AO telemetry data handling working full time at observatories with AO facility instrumentation. Gemini has two PSF reconstruction efforts ongoing: one for Altair [3, 4] and one on the dual channel coronagraphic imager NICI presented in this poster. Since recently Gemini is collaborating with Pontificia Universidad Catolica (PUC) in Chile to assist the observatory exploiting its AO telemetry data. Topics addressed by this collaboration are the Gemini internal vibration mitigation effort [1, 6], turbulence profile reconstruction [2] and PSF retrieval and system monitoring.