{"id":62173,"date":"2017-07-05T14:34:24","date_gmt":"2017-07-06T00:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=62173"},"modified":"2020-01-22T13:32:45","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T23:32:45","slug":"sharper-eyes-for-maunakea-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2017\/07\/05\/sharper-eyes-for-maunakea-telescope\/","title":{"rendered":"<abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> astronomer to build sharper eyes for Maunakea telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><div class=\"responsive-video-wrap\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Youtube video player\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WiGUBS1ByxE?showinfo=0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"clear-photo\">The University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\/88inch\/\">2.2 meter (88-inch) telescope<\/a> on Maunakea will soon be producing images nearly as sharp as those from the <a href=\"http:\/\/hubblesite.org\/\">Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>, thanks to a new instrument using the latest image sharpening technologies. Astronomer <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/people.ifa.hawaii.edu\/faculty\/bio\/christoph-baranec\/\">Christoph Baranec<\/a><\/strong>, at the <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\/\">Institute for Astronomy<\/a> (IfA), has been awarded a nearly $1 million grant from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nsf.gov\/\">National Science Foundation<\/a> to build an autonomous adaptive optics system called <a href=\"http:\/\/robo-ao.org\">Robo-<abbr title=\"Adaptive Optics\">AO<\/abbr>-2<\/a> for the <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> telescope.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Construction of the new instrument starts at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\/ifa2\/hilo\/\"><abbr>IfA<\/abbr>&#8216;s Hilo facility<\/a> in September, and it will be operational in just two years. The instrument will take hundreds of high-resolution images of planets, stars\u00a0and asteroids every night without operators on the summit. &ldquo;The new Robo-<abbr>AO<\/abbr>-2 will usher in a new age of high-resolution science in astronomy,&rdquo; says\u00a0Baranec, &ldquo;and we&#8217;re doing it with one of the oldest and smallest telescopes on Maunakea.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The Robo-<abbr>AO<\/abbr>-2 system will take advantage of recent renovations to the <abbr>UH<\/abbr> 2.2-meter telescope, and the superior atmospheric conditions above Maunakea, to make some of the sharpest visible-light images from the Earth&#8217;s surface. &ldquo;Because Robo-<abbr>AO<\/abbr>-2 will be so versatile and capable, we&#8217;ll be able to undertake surveys of an unprecedented number of exoplanet host stars and candidate lensed quasars, and even monitor the nightly weather of our planetary neighbors&#8212;all in high-definition color,&rdquo; says Baranec. The latter is particularly timely as <abbr title=\"National Aeronautic and Space Administration\">NASA<\/abbr> is now planning to send probes to Uranus and Neptune in the coming decades. Knowing what to expect ahead of time is a crucial element of mission planning.<\/p>\n<h2>Educating the next generation of astronomers<\/h2>\n<p>Baranec is also planning to use Robo-<abbr>AO<\/abbr>-2 to support education efforts in <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span>. &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/hilo.hawaii.edu\/\">Â鶹´«Ã½Hilo<\/a> in particular has guaranteed time for their students on the <abbr title=\"University of Hawaii\">UH<\/abbr> 2.2-meter and I&#8217;m excited to see our local youth operating this cutting-edge technology for both classes and summer research projects,&rdquo; says Baranec. In addition, time with Robo-<abbr>AO<\/abbr>-2 will also be made available to high school students through the Maunakea Scholars program, a partnership involving the Maunakea Observatories, <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> State Department of Education and <abbr>UH<\/abbr> led by Canada-France-<span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Telescope.<\/p>\n<p>The new instrument is based on the prototype Robo-<abbr>AO<\/abbr> system developed by Baranec at Caltech, and later used with telescopes at the Palomar Observatory and Kitt Peak National Observatory. It has been an indispensable tool in confirming or revising the thousands of exoplanet discoveries made by <abbr>NASA<\/abbr>&#8216;s Kepler mission, and in measuring the rates at which different types of stars are born into single, double, triple and even quadruple star systems.<\/p>\n<p>All Robo-<abbr>AO<\/abbr> systems use an invisible ultraviolet laser to create an artificial guide star in the sky to measure the blurring caused by Earth&#8217;s atmosphere. By measuring how the atmosphere affects this artificial star, a flexible mirror in the system can be deformed to remove its blurring effects. Because light from the laser and celestial objects pass through the same atmosphere, and both are reflected off of the deformable mirror, images of celestial objects are similarly de-blurred, leading to very sharp images limited only by the same laws of physics that limit the sharpness of space-based telescopes.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/RoboAdaptiveOptics\">See more videos of Robo-<abbr>AO<\/abbr><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8212;By Roy Gal<\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_62176\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-62176\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/manoa-ifa-robo-ao.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"411\" class=\"size-full wp-image-62176\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/manoa-ifa-robo-ao.jpg 620w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/manoa-ifa-robo-ao-260x172.jpg 260w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-62176\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The ultraviolet Robo-AO laser originating from the Kitt Peak (Arizona) 2.1-meter Telescope dome. Although the laser is invisible to the human eye, it shows up in digital <abbr title=\"Single-lens Reflex\">SLR<\/abbr> cameras once the\u00a0internal <abbr title=\"ultraviolet\">UV<\/abbr> blocking filters are removed. The apparent color of the laser beam is a result of the <abbr>UV<\/abbr> light leaking through the camera&#8217;s red, green and blue pixel filters by slightly different amounts. Image credit: C. Baranec.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christoph Baranec at the Institute for Astronomy was awarded a $1 million grant to build the autonomous adaptive optics system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":62176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,35,659,14,9,56],"class_list":["post-62173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-maunakea","tag-uh-hilo","tag-uh-manoa","tag-video-2","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/manoa-ifa-robo-ao.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62173"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109967,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62173\/revisions\/109967"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}