Science with CFHT's future high dynamic range AO system PUEO NUI
Résumé
Rethinking the efficient use of 4m-class telescopes in the dawning era of larger facilities is a timely but challenging debate. The extensive use of PUEO for imaging (and now spectroscopy) has kept CFHT at the forefront of scientific research with adaptive optics since its commissioning in 1996. Even though larger facilities are now starting to think about ways to implement high order AO systems, we believe the medium size of the CFHT and the excellent quality of the site on Mauna Kea is a perfect combination to reach the highest performances with a high order AO system. The fields of application of high order adaptive optics are exciting: They include extremely high contrast imaging and coronography in the near-infrared and diffraction-limited imaging in the optical, with the corresponding gain in angular resolution. In this paper we present a quick description of a few specific astrophysical problems that would benefit from an upgraded AO system at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. More technical details about the upgrade of PUEO are presented by Lai et al. and Cuillandre et al. in these proceedings, see papers 4839-78 and 4839-31.