Why do telescopes shoot lasers?

Turbulence in our atmosphere blurs images of the cosmos, but astronomers have a trick up their sleeve: adaptive optics. Using powerful lasers and fast deformable mirrors we can correct this blurring in real time and obtain extremely sharp astronomical images. In this episode of Chasing Starlight we show you how this amazing technology works and how it’s implemented in our telescopes.

00:00 - Intro
01:23 - How does it work?
03:36 - Creating artificial stars

Credit:
ESO

Directed by: L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser
Hosted by: S. Randall
Written by: H. Huysegoms
Editing: M. Kornmesser, L. Calçada
Videography: A. Tsaousis
Animations & footage: ESO, E. Garcés, L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser, Nick Risinger, Microgate, P. Weilbacher (AIP), P. Horálek, Roland Bacon, Zdeněk Bardon, C. Malin, M. Zamani, A. de Burgos Sierra, CIMOLAI, S. Petković, E. Garcés, ESA, J. C. Muñoz-Mateos, S. Guisard, Focuslight
Music: VIDEVO
Web and technical support: E. Arango, R. Y. Shida
Scientific consultant: P. Amico
Promotion: O. Sandu
Filming Locations: ESO Supernova (supernova.eso.org)

Produced by ESO, the European Southern Observatory (eso.org)

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Richard Marquand (director), Howard Kazanjian (producer), George Lucas (story)

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Roland Emmerich (director), Dean Devlin (producer)


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#ESO #europeansouthernobservatory #astronomy #science