E. Gendron, T. Morris, F. Vidal, A. Basden, M. Brangier, Z. Hubert, R. Myers, G. Rousset, F. Chemla, A. Longmore, T. Butterley, N. Dipper, C. Dunlop, D. Geng, D. Gratadour, D. Henry, P. Laporte, N. Looker, D. Perret, A. Sevin, G. Talbot, and E. Younger, “Towards MOAO on the ELT: the CANARY program,” in Second international Conference on Adaptive Optics for Extremely Large Telescopes, Victoria, Canada, Sep. 2011.
Abstract: From the very early concept presented in 2001 at the Venice conference ’Beyond Conventional AO’, to the first on-sky MOAO prototype systems, exactly 10 years have elapsed. End of 2010, the pathfinder instrument called Canary obtained the first open-loop, tomographically compensated images on the WHT. What were the challenges, and what was demonstrated ? How long will it take for real astronomical MOAO system to be installed on an ELT, and what will be the future steps ? We present the Canary program, and discuss how these achievement contribute to build the future MOAO systems of the ELT.