A testing facility at the Asiago Copernico telescope in the framework of the ADaptive Optics National laboratory of Italy: ADONI

In the context of ADONI, the newly constituted laboratory for INAF Adaptive Optics activities, it is foreseen to set-up a facility accessible to the Italian and international AO community, with the purpose of facilitating the testing of critical sub-systems or components (which may be part of instruments under construction), or prototypes of innovative concepts which may require on-sky demonstrations. The 182cm Copernico Telescope located in Asiago (Italy) has been selected to be a suitable place to set-up this public facility, where a common optical bench will be made available at the Coudé focus to host visiting instrumentation. In this paper we describe the opto-mechanical train to the Coudé focal station to be implemented for the laboratory set-up, and we sketch out the foreseen telescope refurbishing activities to implement this multi-purpose testing facility dedicated to AO related projects.