37. ADAPTIVE OPTICS (AO)-

♤ Light from a distant star or galaxy is distorted as it passes through the turbulent earth's atmosphere, preventing a telescope on the surface of the earth from forming sharp images. Instruments using a new method called adaptive optics can eliminate the blurring effect of the atmosphere. Thus images formed with the 100-inch telescope using adaptive optics are as sharp as those from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This is the most revolutionary technical development in astronomy since Galileo first used an astronomical telescope in 1609.

♤ Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortions in a wavefront and compensating for them with a device that corrects those errors such as a deformable mirror or a liquid crystal array. AO was first envisioned by Horace W. Babcock in 1953.