This laser star is fully operational

[n2doc]

Alan Boyle says: Laser-guided adaptive optics are all the rage for telescopes nowadays. A laser guide star helps the software that processes telescope data figure out how to compensate for the shimmer of Earth’s atmosphere. And besides, it can make for a cool “Star Wars” special effect, as seen in this composite image of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

ESO astronomer Yuri Beletsky set up the picture while his colleagues were pointing the guide-star system at the dense core of our own Milky Way galaxy, hanging in the clear skies above Chile's Atacama Desert. The Very Large Telescope is actually four separate telescope units, working together in an array. This particular unit is named Yepun, which is the word for the star Sirius in the language of the region's indigenous people.

Yepun's laser guide system energizes sodium atoms at an altitude of 56 miles (90 kilometers). The telescope system's software uses that artificial "star" to determine how light is blurred as it shines down through the atmosphere. Those readings can in turn be factored into astronomical observations, to add sharpness to what otherwise would be blurry images. This is the process that's known as adaptive optics, and it's being used more and more to produce images from ground-based telescopes that can rival the Hubble Space Telescope's sharpest stunners.

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http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/07/5062807-this-laser-star-is-fully-operational

[GodlessBiker]

1. Governor Tarkin, I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.

[Occulus]

2. Charming, to the last.

[The Philosopher]

3. That's no laser light show.

It's a telescope!

[mindwalker_i]

4. It's insignificant compared to the power

of the (nonrelativistic) mass times acceleration.