The UC Center for Adaptive Optics
A UC Center for Adaptive Optics (UC CfAO) headquartered at UC Santa Cruz has received initial funding from the UC Office of the President.
Adaptive optics (AO) is an enabling technology that sharpens images by removing optical aberrations. This new technology is transformative for ground-based astronomical telescopes and for imaging the living human retina. New applications such as imaging structures on the interior of cells are just now developing. Figures 1 and 2 show the dramatic improvement in spatial resolution attained using adaptive optics to image the planet Neptune, and to image cone photoreceptors in the living human retina . It is not uncommon for adaptive optics images made with the 10-m diameter Keck Telescopes in Hawaii to have 50 times the spatial resolution of images made using conventional techniques.
Figure 1. Two Keck Telescope images of the planet Neptune in infrared light (wavelength 1.6 microns). Left: normal image. Right: adaptive optics image. Credit: Gibbard et al. 2003 |
Figure 2. Two fundus camera images of part of a living human retina. Left: normal image. Right: adaptive optics image. Credit: A. Roorda and D. Williams |
Under NSF Science and Technology Center funding, the Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO) has been key to the spectacular success of astronomical AO systems at UC’s Keck and Lick Observatories, and has led to the establishment of UC as a leading center for three dimensional imaging of the living human retina. All NSF STCs are limited to 10 years; in CfAO’s case funding ends in Nov 2009.
The UC Center headquartered at UC Santa Cruz will maintain the links established within the UC Adaptive Optics community of Vision Scientists and Astronomers via conferences, workshops, retreats and the AO Summer School.
Figure 1 - Gibbard, S. G.; de Pater, I.; Roe, H. G.; Martin, S.; Macintosh, B. A.; Max, C. E. 2003, “The altitude of Neptune cloud features from high-spatial-resolution near-infrared spectra,” Icarus 166, 359
Figure 2 – Austin Roorda and David Williams, Nature 397, 520 - 522 (11 Feb 1999) Letter