Spaceflight ๐Adaptive Optics is a technique to compensate quickly varying optical aberrations in an #optical system ๐ญ. A limitation is that the correction is only valid in a very small patch of sky ๐. Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics, or #MCAO uses several guide stars โจ to measure the light wave aberrations in several directions. The corrected field of view is enlarged by a factor of 10 to 20 to obtain the most uniform output image quality https://mavis-ao.org/mavis/
#MAVIS corrects distortions caused by the Earth's atmosphere. Components:
โข Adaptive Optics System
corrects distortions using mirrors that can change shape in real time to compensate for atmospheric blurring
โข Imaging Camera
captures high-resolution images of celestial objects with sensors to record light from stars, galaxies
โข Spectrograph
splits light into its component colors (spectrum) to reveal temperature, distance, chemical makeup
https://www.hq.eso.org/sci/facilities/develop/instruments/MAVIS.html