CONTEXT

Over the past 20-years, AO observations have made possible some of the major discoveries in astronomy with, among others, detailed study of the massive black hole at the center of our Galaxy, detailed images of the surface of solar systems planets or precise morphology and dynamics of very distant galaxies. AO for astronomy has revolutionized observations with ground-based telescopes by providing the highest achievable image quality to the community and it is now inconceivable to consider building a large optical telescope without AO.

We are today at the beginning of a new era for AO, with the deployment of a revolutionary generation of AO systems called Wide Field AO (WFAO). By using multiple Laser Guide Stars (LGS), WFAO increases both the field of the AO corrected images and the fraction of the sky that can benefit from such correction by an order of magnitude. Therefore, whereas the first AO systems were well suited for observations of bright and relatively small objects, the new generation of WFAO is opening the path for a multitude of new science cases. All 8/10m telescopes are progressively incorporating WFAO systems, and turned into adaptive telescopes. A magnificent example of such capabilities is the combination of the ESO-operated Adaptive-Optics Facility (AOF) with the cutting-edge instrumentation of the MUSE Integral-Field Spectrograph (IFS), providing AO-corrected 3D data cubes on a regular basis. And we can also cite Keck-KAPA, MAVIS, Gemini Gemma or the Ultimate-Subaru on-going projects. As a consequence, the astronomical community exposed to AO- corrected data is growing exponentially.

The next step forward will come from the so-called Extremely Large Telescopes (39m diameter for the ELT, 30m for the TMT, 24m for the GMT) that will see first light as soon as 2025. The scientific potential of these giants fully relies on complex AO systems, integrated inside the telescope itself, and providing high- resolution images to all the instrumentation downstream. This is a change in paradigm, with telescopes now providing 100% of their science assisted by AO.

The exceptional advancement in AO technology and observational capability has, however, not been followed by a comparable advancement in the development of data analysis methods. The main scientific objective of our APPLY project is to address this deficit and provide the community with a set of optimized data processing tools dedicated for AO- assisted observations.