Invited Paper IPF-SuA5
Adaptive Optics in Astronomy

Sunday, October 19, 2008, 4:20 pm, Room 312

Adaptive optics (AO) is a technology for the real-time correction of the optical aberrations experienced by light waves as they propagate through atmospheric turbulence and similar distorting media. AO is now used at numerous ground based astronomical observatories, and currently obtains (for many applications) image quality which approaches what could be achieved with the same aperture diameter in space. The benefits of AO increase dramatically with telescope size; for the future generation of extremely large telescopes, the benefits of AO may be as great as 100 times larger than can be obtained with existing telescopes on account of the factor of 10 advantage in collecting area. In this presentation, we will briefly review the fundamentals of adaptive optics, illustrate some of the astronomical results which have been achieved using AO to date, summarize the recent advances in component technologies and system concepts which enable the implementation of AO on future extremely large telescope, and finally, describe the designs and expected performance of the “first light” AO systems for the Thirty Meter Telescope project.