The MICADO first-light imager for the ELT: first steps of the SCAO system MAIT
arXiv:2607.12814 · doi:10.1117/12.3018078
The paper reports on the early manufacturing and integration steps of the single-conjugate adaptive optics (SCAO) module for MICADO, the first-light imager of the Extremely Large Telescope, including the AO test bench and the beta‑flat configuration.
Abstract
MICADO is the ELT first light instrument, an imager working at the diffraction limit of the telescope thanks to two adaptive optics (AO) modes: a single conjugate one (SCAO), available at the instrument first light and developed by the MICADO consortium, and a multi conjugate one (MCAO), developed by the MORFEO consortium. Although the project final design review process is about to be completed, the review board and ESO acknowledged that "the review of the final design can be considered complete for the majority of the MICADO sub-systems" and agreed that MICADO can start manufacturing. For the MICADO SCAO module, we have started the manufacturing of several parts: the majority of the SCAO optics and of the SCAO mechanics, the real-time computer software and the instrument control software. This manufacturing is ordered in several steps to allow the progressive integration of a first full AO close loop with the final SCAO parts. In this contribution, we will focus on the first two steps: on our AO Sésame bench and the so-called "beta flat configuration". We will present the status of this manufacturing and the first results obtained.