Handouts: Adaptive Optics Schematic

The illustration (1) is an example of an image (NIRI H-band image at 0.26 arcsec natural seeing) without the help of adaptive optics. When starlight is collected and focused by the telescope, just prior to coming to a focus, the light entering an adaptive optics system is first collimated (2) and is reflected off a deformable mirror (3). After reflecting off the deformable mirror, the light passes through a beam-splitter (4) where the shorter wavelength light (optical) enters the wavefront sensor (5) which takes a "snapshot" of the distortions on the wavefront and sends the information via a computer (6) back to the deformable mirror to adjust the wavefronts and keep them flat. Finally, the light is focused (7) and imaged on a detector (8) (NIRI/Altair H-band AO-corrected image at 0.060 arcsec) for astronomers to study.