EAGER: Composite Adaptive Mirrors

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的，地面上的望远镜必须通过地球大气层的干扰来观察深空物体。 当光线穿过大气层时，由于风切变和大气层内温度和压力的变化，光线会被湍流扩散，这会有效地降低地球望远镜的分辨率。这种困难可以在很大程度上克服相对较新的技术，采用“激光导星”和“自适应光学”。“一束明亮的激光照亮了目标物体附近的一片天空。激光的光被吸收，然后被高层大气中的原子重新发射，高层大气中的原子位于大部分干扰的低层大气之上。 然后，返回信号可以用于跟踪光的时间依赖性散射。自适应光学公司利用这些信息调整望远镜仪器中的光学元件，以将图像还原为从大气层上方看到的图像。为了完成这项工作，天文学家不得不将光路从望远镜转移到一个光具座上，在那里，一个“变形镜”修改光束以校正失真。然后，校正后的光束必须通过管道返回科学仪器。 然而，最近，一些天文台已经开发了自适应次镜，在望远镜光束本身内进行调整。 (The副镜通常是望远镜光学链中的第二面镜子，它将主镜的光线反射回科学仪器。这样做的问题是，次镜往往相对较大-比当前的可变形镜大得多;因此，使用当前技术制造大型自适应镜非常昂贵。 夏威夷大学的Christ Ftaclas博士正在研究一种制造自适应镜子的新方案，如果成功的话，它将更便宜，并能实现更大的自适应镜子。 自适应光学的最终目标是使望远镜的主镜自适应，而Ftaclas博士的想法可能会成为现实。 他的工作是由NSF的天文科学部根据早期概念资助探索性研究（EAGER）。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Telescopes on the ground must observe objects in deep space through the interference of the earth's atmosphere. As light passes through the atmosphere it gets spread out by turbulence due to wind shear and changes in temperature and pressure within the atmospheric layers which effectively diminishes the resolving power of earth-based telescopes. This difficulty can be overcome to a large extent by relatively new techniques employing "Laser Guide Stars" and "Adaptive Optics." A bright laser illuminates a patch of sky near the target object. The laser's light is absorbed and then re-emitted by atoms in the upper atmosphere, above much of the interfering lower atmosphere. The return signal can then be used to track the time-dependent scattering of the light. Adaptive Optics uses this information to adjust optics in the telescope's instrumentation to restore the image to what would be seen from above the atmosphere.In order to make this work astronomers have had to divert the light path from the telescope to an optical bench where a "deformable mirror" modifies the optical beam to correct for the distortions. The corrected beam then must be piped back into the science instruments. Recently, however, some observatories have been developing adaptive secondary mirrors, making the adjustments within the telescope beam itself. (The secondary mirror is typically the second mirror in a telescope's optical chain and it reflects light from the primary mirror back down into the science instruments.) The problem with this is that secondary mirrors tend to be relatively large - much larger than current deformable mirrors; consequently making large adaptive mirrors using current technology is very costly. Dr. Christ Ftaclas of the University of Hawaii is investigating a new scheme to make adaptive mirrors that, if successful, would be less expensive and enable even larger adaptive mirrors. The ultimate goal of adaptive optics would be to make the telescope's primary mirror adaptive and with Dr. Ftaclas' idea this may become a reality. His work is funded by NSF's Division of Astronomical Sciences under an Early-concepts Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER).