Jointly developed by the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) and ONERA, and installed at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OSU Institut Pythéas), PAPYRUS is a unique Adaptive Optics (AO) bench mounted on the 1.52-meter telescope (T152). Designed for on-sky validation of innovative Adaptive Optics concepts, it serves as a versatile platform dedicated to developing next-generation instrumentation for major observatories such as the VLT and the ELT.
Since 2020, PAPYRUS has supported 10 PhD theses and fostered strong collaborations with leading institutions, including the Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), INAF – Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, the University of Geneva, the University of Durham, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), as well as industrial partners such as Bertin Alpao and Oxford Instruments Physics & Astronomy.
Recently, PAPYRUS observed the Galilean moons: Io, Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. The adaptive optics loop was successfully closed on each of them, enabling observations both in the visible and infrared domains.
The images obtained are not only beautiful, they are also of significant scientific interest. PAPYRUS uses a pyramid wavefront sensor to measure distortions caused by atmospheric turbulence, and studying its performance on extended objects such as these moons remains an open question in adaptive optics. The analysis of this new dataset will represent an important step toward achieving high-resolution imaging of extended sources from the ground.
Captures are below, and you can see the video clips there:
- Jupiter and Ganymede: https://youtu.be/cDW6-h1brGM
- The moons of Jupiter: https://youtu.be/vlzF37se4rk
