Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias - IAC

Principal high resolution projects:

Adaptive Optics with FPGAs A project for the technological demonstration of the use of FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array) in the field of adaptive optics systems.
GTC Adaptive Optics System The IAC contributed to the preliminary design of the GTC adaptive optics system with studies for the wavefront sensor and controller (WFS) and the artificial laser star guide system (LGS).
LGS Laser Guide Star. Laser Guide Star with OGS. The aim of this project is to create laser guide stars using the OGS laser. Artificial laser stars are needed by the adaptive optics systems being developed for all the large earth telescopes, to decrease the effect of atmospheric turbulence on image quality.
SCIDAR SCIntillation Detection And Ranging and Wave Front Sensor. The SCIDAR instrument creates profiles of atmospheric turbulence by observing binary stars.