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[sarwat]

Hi All,

Recently, while talking to some fellow astronomers, the topic of adaptive optics came up. I confessed that I did not know much about it; apart from a top level idea of sensing the deformation in the wavefront and compensating for it. I found this very nice and accessible poster on uchicago site. This helped me understand the whole thing much better and I think it will be a useful reference for anybody interested in the subject.

astro.uchicago.edu/chaos/poster1/poster1.html

Sarwat

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Any thing to improve the seeing in astronomy...I'm for. Adaptive optics is a rather cool tool, much like the anti-shake option on some binoculars. But I don't think that they will ever surpass the quality of Earth orbit scopes.

I have read where really huge mirrors will be made/have been made with adaptive optics...with good results.

I want one.

[sarwat]

Hey Joe,

No, they definitely can not be better than orbiting telescopes, but they can get close and they are much much cheaper, easy to maintain and can have large apertures. I want two!

Sarwat

By the way, next time you see me I will be wearing a SCUBA gear

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

The aqua-astronomer....I like it!