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Hubble Accuracy Surpassed By Earthbound Telescope
randuev writes "A high-speed adaptive optics system helped the Large Binocular Telescope (on Earth) to beat the accuracy of the Hubble Space Telescope's observations. 'A special sensor detects atmospheric distortions in real time and controls the mirror to adjust its position to compensate, effectively canceling out the blurring. The mirror can make adjustments every one-thousandth of a second, with accuracy to better than ten nanometers.' Now, that's what I call real-time. This nifty trick multiplied the Strehl ratio (optical quality) of the LBT by about 80 times. The new system was tested in May and June, so hopefully we'll soon see more space around us in higher resolution on Google Sky."
While this does mean that it could possibly make some Deep Field images. There is still another problem that makes this possibly intractable. The atmospheric absorption of some wavelengths means that it might still not be able to see certain areas in the spectrum effectively; this could prevent it from being able to produce nice deep field images like the hubble. However this ability to resolve objects that much better means that it could most certainly be effective at searching for planets.
...that it was more than 20 years ahead of any Earth-bound telescope when it launched.