University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have taken advantage of a recently mounted laser guide star system at UC’s Lick Observatory to obtain sharp, twinkle-free images of the faint dusty ...

Space junk is a growing problem. Better fight it with lasers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Telescope operators figured out ...

It’s sometimes easy to forget that the light in the sky is an actual star. With how reliable it is and how busy we tend to be as humans, we can take that incredible fact and stow it away and largely ...

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 ...

French firm CILAS, which specializes in lasers and photonics technologies for military and astronomy applications, has signed an agreement to make some critical optical components for the Thirty Meter ...

Ground-based telescopes have long contended with atmospheric turbulence that diminishes image clarity, and the advent of adaptive optics combined with laser guide stars has been transformative in ...

Piezo ceramic actuators combine rapid response with high resolution and high force generation, ideal prerequisites to drive highly-dynamic deformable mirrors. The principle has been used in adaptive ...

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: ...

The W. M. Keck Observatory and ALPAO have announced that they are partnering to develop an adaptive optics system for the Keck II 10-meter telescope, located on Maunakea, Hawaii. The firms are working ...