ASTRON C10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Spherical Aberration, Optical Axis, Adaptive Optics
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ASTRON C10 Full Course Notes
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A large telescope provides greater clarity but turbulence in the atmosphere blurs the images a. b. Beyond a certain size (around 10 centimeters) from the ground, you don"t actually get an actual higher resolution because the blurring of the atmosphere makes the stars blurry. Adaptive optics compensate for the blurring produced by earth"s atmosphere i. ii. If you measure 100s of times per second what a bright star actually looks like you can figure out what the distortions are by earth"s atmosphere and correct it. It also corrects the area around the star so you can view galaxies with more clarity. Refracting telescopes use a lens to bend light a. b. But the amount of bending is a function of the color of the light. White light(which comes from the sun and other stars) consists of many colors so there is a different focal point for each color so the other colors are out of focus i. ii.
