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New telescope shoots powerful laser at Saturn - DiscoverNews (Original Post) Panich52 May 2015 OP
So what happens if Jackpine Radical May 2015 #1
I had the same thought upaloopa May 2015 #2
then we'll set Titan ablaze! MisterP May 2015 #3
Misleading headline. drm604 May 2015 #4
Yee-haw! Smoke 'em out! n/t Orsino May 2015 #5

Jackpine Radical

(45,274 posts)
1. So what happens if
Tue May 12, 2015, 12:51 PM
May 2015

the Saturnians get all saturnine at having a laser beam wreck their saturnalia and decide to shoot back?

What then, huh?

drm604

(16,230 posts)
4. Misleading headline.
Tue May 12, 2015, 03:56 PM
May 2015

That's not your fault, that's the fault of the author of the discovery.com article.

This has nothing to do with Saturn (other than the fact that it could, if they wanted, be used to obtain sharper images of the planet).

Here's an article about this from the website of the actual observatory.
http://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann15034/

The Adaptive Optics Facility uses sensors to analyse the atmospheric turbulence and a deformable mirror integrated in the telescope to correct for the image distortions caused by the atmosphere. But several bright point-like stars needs to be at hand in order to correct for the effects of turbulence, and these need to be very close to the science target in the sky.

Finding multiple natural stars for this role is unlikely. So, to make correcting for the atmospheric turbulence possible everywhere in the sky, for all possible science targets, powerful laser beams are projected into the sky. When the beams interact with the sodium layer high in the atmosphere they create artificial stars. By measuring the atmospherically induced motions and distortions of these artificial stars, and making minute adjustments to the deformable secondary mirror, the telescope can produce images with much greater sharpness than is possible without adaptive optics.
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