For astronomers, it’s a magical moment: you’re staring at a monitor, and a blurry image of a cosmological object sharpens up, revealing new details. We call this “closing the loop,” a reference to the ...

Foreword / Robert Q Fugate -- Preface -- Introduction -- List of acronyms -- 1: Sputnik, reality, and technology -- 2: Early days: the Romans -- 3: Rome and Itek: first adaptive optics systems -- 4: ...

New Technology Brings Space Telescope Image Quality Down to Earth, Offering Astronomical Image Clarity Never Seen Before The next generation of adaptive optics has arrived at the Large Binocular ...

SANTA CRUZ, CA–Adaptive optics technology can remove the blurring effect of the Earth’s atmosphere that has long plagued astronomers, allowing ground-based telescopes to achieve a clarity of vision ...