![]() The idea is to make adaptive optics user-friendly for our community. Altair's commissioning on Gemini is expected to be complete before the end of 2003.Ī key feature of Altair's sophistication is the ability to automatically monitor, adjust and optimize multiple parameters during image exposures. " Commissioning a precision instrument on a 7-story, 350-ton, sophisticated telescope is especially challenging because of the extremely intricate coordination required to make all the systems work together seamlessly," said Herriot. The instrument team, comprised of 25 scientists and engineers, guided the Gemini adaptive optics system from design to commissioning over the past six years. Jean-Pierre Véran, have been commissioning Altair on Gemini North from late 2002 through early 2003. Working with Gemini Observatory personnel, the Canadian team headed by Project Manager Herriot and Project Scientist Dr. " The end result is," says Herriot, "images that rival or even exceed the sharpness of pictures taken from space." Altair is able to precisely correct the distorted starlight up to 1,000 times per second using a sophisticated, deformable mirror about the size of the palm of your hand. " Adaptive optics with altitude conjugation is a pioneering new technique that is a powerful way to measure and fix distortions to starlight, which traveled undisturbed for vast distances through space until hitting pockets of warm and cold air in earth's atmosphere," said Glen Herriot, the systems engineer who managed the building of Altair in Victoria, BC at the laboratories of the National Research Council of Canada. By conjugating or tuning the system for a specific layer above the telescope, Altair can generate a more accurate model of the starlight's path through our atmosphere. ![]() In an altitude-conjugated system like Gemini's, the distortions are assumed to be at the dominant turbulence layer of the atmosphere. Most adaptive optics systems that are currently in use correct for distortions to starlight by assuming that all of the distortions occur where starlight is collected - near the surface of the telescope's primary mirror. The remarkable detail in the Gemini images was made possible by Altair's unique ability to correct starlight that has been blurred by atmospheric turbulence using adaptive optics with altitude conjugation. The close-up images of M-13, with and without Altair, as well as a spectacular reference image of the entire cluster, provided by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, can be viewed and downloaded at. "The resolution obtained in these images is approximately equivalent to seeing the separation between an automobile's headlights on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco while standing 3,850 kilometers away in Hawai`i," said Observatory Adaptive Optics Scientist Dr. ![]() The dense star cluster known to generations of skywatchers as the Great Hercules Cluster or M-13 is home to hundreds of thousands of stars that, in the center, are often blurred by our atmosphere into a great glowing mass. Gillett Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i.Īmong several of the first images from Altair (Altitude Conjugate Adaptive Optics for Infrared), the high-resolution data reveal multitudes of stars with stunning clarity. The thousands of swarming stars at the cluster's core were made visible by an innovative adaptive optics system called Altair that is currently being commissioned on the Frederick C. A razor-sharp image was released today revealing new details at the heart of a famous star cluster.
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