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ESO's Very Large Telescope Now Delivers Images Sharper Than Hubble (eso.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the can-you-see-hear-me-now dept.

ffkom shares an excerpt from a press release via the European Southern Observatory: ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has achieved first light with a new adaptive optics mode called laser tomography -- and has captured remarkably sharp test images of the planet Neptune, star clusters and other objects. The pioneering MUSE instrument in Narrow-Field Mode, working with the GALACSI adaptive optics module, can now use this new technique to correct for turbulence at different altitudes in the atmosphere. It is now possible to capture images from the ground at visible wavelengths that are sharper than those from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The combination of exquisite image sharpness and the spectroscopic capabilities of MUSE will enable astronomers to study the properties of astronomical objects in much greater detail than was possible before.

2 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Aim it at the moon... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    [1] MUSE and GALACSI in Wide-Field Mode already provides a correction over a 1.0-arcminute-wide field of view, with pixels 0.2 by 0.2 arcseconds in size. This new Narrow-Field Mode from GALACSI covers a much smaller 7.5-arcsecond field of view, but with much smaller pixels just 0.025 by 0.025 arcseconds to fully exploit the exquisite resolution.

    tan( 0.025 arcseconds ) = 1.2120342e-7
    distance to the moon is 384.4 million meters

    1.2120342e-7 * 384.4e6 = 46.59 meters

    tl;dr: Still about 2 orders of magnitude away from being able to take a blurry ass 15x20 pixel image of the lander. Try again in a few decades.

  2. Hubble optical flaw origin by sjbe · · Score: 5, Informative

    IIRC the mirror was ground with gravity present. Then under zero G conditions it sprung back to an unanticipated shape.

    Your recollection is incorrect. It was ground very precisely to the wrong shape due to some incorrectly assembled testing equipment. The problem was actually noted prior to launch but the test results were ignored. Gravity or the lack thereof had no relationship to the problem with the shape of the mirror. It was simply made to the wrong specifications and then final testing failed to catch the problem.