ONIRICA A Conceptual Design Study of a Large FoV Near-IR Imager for OWL

Abstract

The scope of this document is to report a conceptual study of an imaging camera that should fully exploit the sensitivity and spatial resolution capabilities of OWL in the near-IR. This camera will take advantage of a low-order correction exploited by an MCAO system. The conceptual study also includes the very preliminary design of the MCAO wavefront sensor that drives the tertiary adaptive mirror of the telescope with the purpose of removing essentially the layers close to the ground. Provisions to extend the design of the WFS to full MCAO correction are also presented. An analysis of the relevant science cases is carried out together with a simulation of the possible results that the camera could achieve, above all in terms of sky coverage and limiting magnitudes and when compared to possible 30-60 meters class competitor telescopes.