Adaptive optics

Astronomers at the Paranal Observatory in Chile have achieved first light with a cutting-edge adaptive optics mode for the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), designed to remove interference caused by Earth’s atmosphere.

Astronomers have developed a new visible-light adaptive optics (AO) system for a 6.5 meter telescope in Chile's Atacama desert. The new AO system produces the sharpest telescopic images ever captured – images twice as sharp as can be achieved by the Hubble space telescope.

The astrophysics research arm of the American Museum of Natural History has developed methods for examining an entire stellar system of exoplanets simultaneously.