Adaptive optics
A system of fast reacting electronic supports which deform the mirror inside a telescope to compensate for the way in which the Earth's atmosphere distorts our view of celestial objects. In effect in detects the twinkling of stars and moves the telescope's mirror to cancel this out. This process stops the image from blurring and allows more detail to be seen. See also active optics. | ||||
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Adaptive Optics Definition from Science & Technology Dictionaries & Glossaries
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Adaptive Optics
Recent advances in deformable mirror technology and laser guide stars allows most of the distortion produced by the atmosphere to be removed. This results in near diffraction-limited performance of ground-based receiving telescopes, giving image quality similar to that produced by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Recent advances in deformable mirror technology and laser guide stars allows most of the distortion produced by the atmosphere to be removed. This results in near diffraction-limited performance of ground-based receiving telescopes, giving image quality similar to that produced by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Adaptive Optics Definition from Encyclopedia Dictionaries & Glossaries
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Adaptive optics
Adaptive optics is a technology to improve the performance of optical systems by reducing the effects of rapidly changing optical distortion. It is commonly used on astronomical telescopes to remove the effects of atmospheric distortion, or astronomical seeing. Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortion and rapidly compensating for it either using deformable mirrors or material with variable refractive properties. While the technique was theoretically understood for some time, it was only advances in computer technology during the 1990s that finally made the technique practical. Adaptive optics should not be confused with active optics, which works on a longer timescale to correct the primary mirror geometry itself. The simplest form of adaptive optics is tip-tilt correction, which corresponds to correction of the tilts of the wavefront in two dimensions (equivalent to correction of the position offsets for the image). This is performed using a rapidly moving tip-tilt mirror which makes small rotations around two of its axes. A significant fraction of the aberration introduced by the atmosphere can be removed in this way. Tip-tilt mirrors are widely used in night time and solar telescopes, to correct the aberration introduced by the atmosphere on the light path and improve image quality over what would be possible according to the atmospheric seeing. Tip-tilt mirrors are effectively segmented adaptive optics mirrors having only one segment which can tip and tilt, rather than having an array of multiple segments which can tip and tilt independently.
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