`IMAKA is an instrument concept for an extremely wide-field ground-layer adaptive optics on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The instrument takes advantage of the site’s excellent seeing, with its weak free-atmosphere seeing and its confined boundary layer turbulence, and a ground-layer adaptive optics system with a H4RG or CCD focal plane to deliver high-resolution NIR or optical images over fields of view of several tens of arcminutes.  The project is aptly named after the Hawaiian word `imaka meaning “scenic view”

The `IMAKA team completed a feasibility study for the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope, conducted a number of on-sky measurements and experiments to characterize the nature of the optical turbulence near the ground and inside the domes and verify the level of performance GLAO can attain.  We are now in the midst of designing and deploying a demonstrator GLAO system for the University of Hawaii 2.2-m telescope.   We refer to this demonstrator as `imaka (just the word to distinguish it from the larger instrument we envisioned for CFHT).

optical imaging at a 0.3” resolution over a one degree field-of-view