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Adaptive Optics
Newsletter
Volume 2
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Sharper Image with Adaptive Optics
The larger surface plot (lower image) contains the same information as the "picture", but now the height of the "peaks" represents the intensity of the light at each point on the detector. The surface plot is useful because it shows that adaptive optics not only makes images smaller, it also greatly increases their peak intensity because all the light is now falling on a very small area of the detector. Upcoming AO Related Conferences “Engineering the Eye” June 13-15, 2002 Symposium.
at the Center for Vision Science University of Rochester. Call for Papers |
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Stars are
so far away that they would appear as "points" of light in a telescope, if it
weren't for the effects of distortion in the earth's atmosphere. In the figure
on the left, the inset (in the upper left hand corner) shows an uncorrected and
an adaptive optics image of a star, taken on Lick Observatory's 3 meter telescope.
The white color represents the highest intensities, and orange-red the lowest
intensities. The uncorrected image shows the deleterious effects of atmospheric
blurring which are to a large extent removed by adaptive optics.