'Imaka: A One-Degree High-Resolution Imager For The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope

The 'Imaka project is a high-resolution wide-field imager proposed for the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope (CFHT) on Mauna Kea. 'Imaka takes advantage of two features of the optical turbulence above Mauna Kea: weak optical turbulence in the free-atmosphere and boundary layer turbulence which is highly confined within a surface layer tens of meters thick and or the telescope enclosures. The combination of the two allows a ground-layer adaptive optics system (GLAO) to routinely deliver an extremely-wide corrected field of view of one-degree at an excellent free-atmosphere seeing limit at visible wavelengths. In addition, populating the focal-plane with orthogonal-transfer CCDs provides a second level of image improvement on the free-atmosphere seeing and the residual GLAO correction. The impact of such an instrument covers a broad range of science and is a natural progression of CFHT's wide-field expertise.