• To improve the telescope optics to be diffraction limited at a wavelength of 2.2 microns (K band), implying inter alia intrinsic (= no seeing) image FWHM = 0.''12. To do this we have implemented:
  • Active control of the primary mirror figure
  • Active alignment of the secondary mirror

  Look-up tables are being developed to automate these processes.

  In 1997 we hope to upgrade the system to provide active control of telescope focus (and maybe adaptive: see below).

• To eliminate image movement from whatever source. To do this we have:
  • Installed a new, stiffer topend ring and vanes;
  • Equipped it with a fast adaptive tip-tilt secondary mirror and fast guider (up to > 100 Hz sample rate).

  With a sensor sampling rate between 30 and 100 Hz (loop bandwidth between 3 and 10 Hz) the tip-tilt secondary reduces image sizes in good seeing from 0.''6 to 0.''3. It is now in regular use, and we hope to be able to guide on stars down to about V = 16 mag.

• To reduce facility seeing by ventilating the dome and cooling the primary mirror. We have:
  • Enhanced the extraction system to remove 10 - 12 dome volumes of air per hour.
  • Installed a Dome Ventilation System (DVS) of sixteen ventilation apertures (operational by April 1997).
  • Installed a 5 kW primary cooling and ventilation system (operational by mid-1997).

Funds in 1997-98 permitting, the thermal isolation of the dome will be increased by insulating the floor.

These improvements are intended to make local seeing - excluding boundary layer effects - imperceptible during about 85% of observable time.

The UKIRT Upgrades Programme is a collaboration of the Joint Astronomy Centre, Hilo, Hawaii(JAC), the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh(ROE), the Royal Greenwich Observatory RGOand the Max Planck Institüt für Astronomie, Heidelberg (MPIA) (See: Contributions).