Solar multi-conjugate adaptive optics at the Dunn Solar Telescope: Preliminary results

We report here the preliminary results obtained with the multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) system at the Dunn Solar Telescope (DST/NSO MCAO) and the optical setup and performances are presented in more details in Moretto et al. in this proceeding. This system relies on the tomography technique, in which three WFS are used, each of them coupled to extended images of the Sun's granulation and/or sunspots, to retrieve a 3D measurement of the turbulent volume in order to command the two DMs. We used a 5x5 subaperture Shack-Hartmann with cross correlation applied on three selected guiding regions - 18" wide- within the 1.25' full FOV. We also report on the estimation of turbulence distribution and the future MCAO performances based on a separate tomographic wavefront sensing experiment using the Dunn Solar Telescope adaptive optics system. In addition, we obtained estimates of the turbulence distribution. The results from this article provides an important step forward for building a full solar multi-conjugate adaptive optics system for the Dunn Solar Telescope and in the long term for the future 4 meter ATST telescope.