Magnifying Visors

What is the difference between adaptive and active optics used in astronomy?

Public Comments

1. First of all: Adaptive optics is a technology to improve the performance of optical systems by reducing the effects of rapidly changing optical distortion. It is commonly used on astronomical telescopes to remove the effects of atmospheric distortion. Adaptive optics works by measuring the distortion and rapidly compensating for it either using deformable mirrors or material with variable refractive properties. Here's what that means. The atmosphere distorts light from stars, so a computer connected to a telescope measures the distortion and changes the shape of the mirror to accommodate. That is ADAPTIVE. ACTIVE is nearly the same, but with one difference. While adaptive optics changes its mirror only once, active optics continuously changes the mirror. My guess is that active optics will be more accurate, just in case the atmospheric distortion levels change. Hope that helped.