Jay-qu Posted February 27, 2006 Report Share Posted February 27, 2006 A powerful new laser that shoots 90 kilometres into the atmosphere to produce an "artificial star" has been tested for the first time by the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Astronomers will use the observations of the laser to correct the blurring in telescope images caused by turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere. This will allow them to image celestial objects with the VLT at a resolution 10 times finer than currently possible. Atmospheric turbulence is the one of the key factors limiting the resolution and light-collecting ability of Earth-based telescopes. So astronomers have been developing adaptive optics systems that measure the turbulence using lasers, then correct for it by adjusting the shape of a telescope's various mirrors about 100 times per second. http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8770 The 50cm wide laser shines out of one of the VLT's 4 8.2m mirrors Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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