Study of GLAO-corrected PSF evolution for the MUSE Wide Field Mode. Expected performance and requirements for PSF reconstruction

Authors

T. Fusco(1), R. Villecroze(2), A. Jarno(2), R. Bacon(2)

Affiliations

(1) ONERA / DOTA (2) Observatoire de Lyon / CRAL

Abstract

The second generation instrument MUSE for the VLT has been designed to profit of the ESO Adaptive Optics Facility (AOF). The two Adaptive Optics (AO) modes (GLAO in Wide Field Mode [WFM] and LTAO in Narrow Field Mode [NFM]) will be used. To achieve its key science goals, MUSE will require information on the full system (Atmosphere, AO, telescope and instrument) image quality and its variation with Field position and wavelength. For example, optimal summation of a large number of deep field exposures in WFM will require a good knowledge of the PSF.

In this paper, we will present an exhaustive analysis of the MUSE Wide Field Mode PSF evolution both spatially and spectrally. For that purpose we have coupled a complete AO simulation tool developed at ONERA with the MUSE instrumental PSF simulation. Relative impact of atmospheric and system parameters (seeing, Cn², LGS and NGS positions etc …) with respect to differential MUSE aberrations per channel (i.e. slicer and IFU) is analysed. The results allow us (in close collaboration with astronomers) to define pertinent parameters (fit parameters using a Moffat function) for a PSF reconstruction process (estimation of this parameters using GLAO telemetry) and to propose an efficient and robust algorithm to be implemented in the MUSE pipeline.

The extension of the spatial and spectral PSF analysis to the NFM case is discussed and preliminary results are given. Some specific requirements for the generalisation of the GLAO PSF reconstruction process to the LTAO case are derived from these early results.