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  • Raman-scattered laser guide...
    Vogt, Frédéric P. A.; Luis Álvarez, José; Bonaccini Calia, Domenico; Hackenberg, Wolfgang; Bourget, Pierre; Aranda, Ivan; Bellhouse, Callum; Blanchard, Israel; Cerda, Susana; Cid, Claudia; Comin, Mauro; Espinoza Contreras, Marcela; Hau, George; Hibon, Pascale; Holzlöhner, Ronald; Jaffé, Yara L.; Kolb, Johann; Kuntschner, Harald; Madec, Pierre-Yves; Mieske, Steffen; Milli, Julien; Opitom, Cyrielle; Parraguez, Diego; Romero, Cristian; Selman, Fernando; Schmidtobreick, Linda; Smoker, Jonathan; Vera Urrutia, Sergio; Zins, Gerard

    Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin), 10/2018, Letnik: 618
    Journal Article

    The first observations of laser guide-star photons that are Raman-scattered by air molecules above the Very Large Telescope (VLT) were reported in June 2017. The initial detection came from the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) optical integral field spectrograph, following the installation of the 4 Laser Guide Star Facility (4LGSF) on Unit Telescope 4 (UT4) of the VLT. In this Letter, we delve further into the symbiotic relationship between the 4LGSF laser guide-star system, the UT4 telescope, and MUSE by monitoring the spectral contamination of MUSE observations by Raman photons over a 27-month period. This dataset reveals that dust particles deposited on the primary and tertiary mirrors of UT4, which are responsible for a reflectivity loss of ∼8% at 6000 Å, contribute (60 ± 5)% to the laser line fluxes detected by MUSE. The flux of Raman lines, which contaminates scientific observations that are acquired with optical spectrographs, thus provides a new, non-invasive means to monitor the evolving scatter properties of the mirrors of astronomical telescopes that are equipped with laser guide-star systems.