The Earth's atmosphere carries with it pollutants and water vapor that tend to attenuate incoming light from space and reflect light back to Earth emanating from ground sources. The atmosphere can act as an unrefined lens that can distort images due to its inhomogeneous density. Interference between light and various gasses in the atmosphere may act to distort the wavelength of incoming starlight. To put a telescope into space allows one to eliminate these difficulties by removing the atmosphere from the observations. I do not know of adaptive optics specifically but I would take it that adaptive optics would allow for refinement and correction for atmospheric interferences when observations are made on Earth by mathematical methods.
Adaptive optics were developed to overcome the blurring of images caused by atmospheric turbulence when observing distant objects in space. By rapidly adjusting the shape of a mirror in a telescope to compensate for the distortions introduced by the atmosphere, adaptive optics improve the clarity and resolution of astronomical images.
Adaptive optics is the process used by telescopes on Earth to overcome the blurring effect of the atmosphere. It involves using deformable mirrors to correct for distortions in real time, resulting in sharper images of astronomical objects.
Adaptive optics technology can enable ground-based telescopes to achieve images as sharp as those from the Hubble Space Telescope. This technology involves using mirrors that can change shape to compensate for the distortions caused by Earth's atmosphere, allowing for clearer and more detailed images.
Astronomer Rodger Thompson said that adaptive optics is fundamentally altering our view of the universe. This technology corrects for distortions caused by the Earth's atmosphere, delivering sharper, more detailed images of celestial objects. It has revolutionized astronomy by enabling clearer observations of stars, planets, and other distant objects.
Telescopes located in high-altitude locations such as Mauna Kea in Hawaii or the Atacama Desert in Chile are best suited for observing celestial objects with minimal atmospheric interference. Telescopes equipped with adaptive optics technology can also help counteract atmospheric distortion to provide clearer images.
Adaptive optics were developed to overcome the blurring of images caused by atmospheric turbulence when observing distant objects in space. By rapidly adjusting the shape of a mirror in a telescope to compensate for the distortions introduced by the atmosphere, adaptive optics improve the clarity and resolution of astronomical images.
A large aperture telescope that does not have adaptive optics which can compensate for unevenness in the atmosphere.
Adaptive Optics
Astronomers can overcome the distortion of starlight caused by Earth's atmosphere by using adaptive optics, which involves real-time adjustments of telescope mirrors to compensate for atmospheric turbulence. Another method is placing telescopes in space, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, which eliminates atmospheric interference altogether, allowing for clearer and more detailed observations of celestial objects.
Adaptive optics is the process used by telescopes on Earth to overcome the blurring effect of the atmosphere. It involves using deformable mirrors to correct for distortions in real time, resulting in sharper images of astronomical objects.
Adaptive optics technology can enable ground-based telescopes to achieve images as sharp as those from the Hubble Space Telescope. This technology involves using mirrors that can change shape to compensate for the distortions caused by Earth's atmosphere, allowing for clearer and more detailed images.
Robert K. Tyson has written: 'Principles of adaptive optics' -- subject(s): Adaptive Optics, Optics, Adaptive 'Astronomical adaptive optics systems and applications III' -- subject(s): Congresses, Adaptive Optics, Astronomical instruments, Imaging systems in astronomy, Design and construction 'Lighter side of adaptive optics' -- subject(s): Adaptive Optics, Humor, Imaging systems in astronomy, Optics, Adaptive
Anisoplanatism can degrade the performance of adaptive optics systems in astronomical observations by causing distortions in the corrected images when the reference star used for correction is not at the same location as the object being observed. This can result in reduced image quality and resolution.
The atmosphere is a chaotic mixture of gases and vapours. The turbulences in the atmosphere distort the paths of light-rays falling on the Earth from distant celestial objects, thereby distorting the images they form in telescopes.To compensate, the more advanced modern telescopes use lasers to measure the current distortion in the atmosphere directly in the path of the telescope, and use those measurements to change the shape of the mirror in the telescope from millisecond to millisecond, thereby cancelling much of those distortions.
A space-based telescope must be mounted on a satellite to study stars effectively due to the lack of atmospheric distortion and light pollution that can affect ground-based telescopes. Hubble Space Telescope is an example of a space-based telescope that provides clear images of the stars and other celestial objects.
Astronomer Rodger Thompson said that adaptive optics is fundamentally altering our view of the universe. This technology corrects for distortions caused by the Earth's atmosphere, delivering sharper, more detailed images of celestial objects. It has revolutionized astronomy by enabling clearer observations of stars, planets, and other distant objects.
Ground-based telescopes suffer from being under the Earth's atmosphere. Movement and different densities in the earth's atmosphere causes the light from distant stars to be randomly refracted, and this appears to ground-based observers as 'twinkling' of the stars. For telescopes, these effects cause images to be distorted and blurred, and prevent the telescope's optics from operating at their best, and from getting the best possible images of planet, nebulae and galaxies. Although it is possible to compensate for the effects of the atmosphere with adaptive optics (literally adjusting the shape of the mirror to correct for these effects), the best way to avoid the effects of the atmosphere is not to have it there at all. The Hubble telescope was put into orbit around the Earth so that it is permanently situated above the atmosphere, and its users never have to worry about it distorting their images - this has allowed astronomers to get the best images of, for example, the most distant galaxies ever produced.