Authors

R. Falomo, R. Ragazzoni, et al.

Affiliations

INAF - OAPD

Abstract

The layer-oriented wavefront sensor onboard MAD, capable to catch up to 8 stars on the pins of pyramids in a 2 arcmin Field of View has been tested at the VLT in a unique dedicated run lasting 6 consecutive nights. As this kind of MCAO observations is focused onto a field with many relatively faint reference stars our main focus was onto extragalactic targets that are plagued by the problem of limited sky coverage.

While we achieved demonstrative science onto a very crowded field using a globular cluster, allowing to assess firmly the compensation stability over the FoV,we succeeded into securing scientific data for a number of extragalctic sources from the local Universe up to Z = 3. In particular we devised stellar population study in a dwarf galaxy, morphology of the jets in nearby AGN and the properties of the environment for high redshift quasars.

The scientific outcome of the observation run, consisting into 6 published refereed papers and two forthcoming, is briefly reported along with some lessons learned.