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TOPIC: CANARY

Blobrana

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Posts: 131433

Date: Dec 29 19:00 2010

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CANARY: First On-Sky Demonstration of Multi-Object Adaptive Optics A Franco-British team has demonstrated for the first time on-sky the feasibility of so-called Multi-Object Adaptive Optics (MOAO). MOAO provides the high spatial resolution delivered by current adaptive-optics systems, but over a much larger field of view, allowing many objects to be observed simultaneously. The demonstration was made with the purpose-built CANARY instrument installed at the Nasmyth focus of the William Herschel Telescope on La Palma. Analysis of the first results obtained in September 2010 shows that CANARY delivered the expected performance the first time it was used - a spectacular success. This test demonstrates the feasibility of the EAGLE instrument, to be mounted on the 42-meter European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). EAGLE will observe simultaneously up to 20 galaxies within a 5-arcminute diameter field of view (1/6 the apparent width of the full Moon). The recent experiment with CANARY on the WHT (mirror diameter 4.2 meters) is in many respects a 10-times scaled-down version of EAGLE on the E-ELT. Read more __________________

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