This line includes instrumental projects designed to measure and correct the disturbances introduced by the atmosphere on the light received by the scientific instruments. We develop highly specialized devices to measure and characterize the atmospheric turbulence and also specific instruments that, placed in the telescope, are able to compensate the effects of the atmosphere and deliver a corrected beam to the scientific instrument.
The Adaptive Optics (AO) for the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) corrects the effect of the atmospheric turbulence on the light, to exploit the high spatial resolution capability of GTC. The Laser Guide Star (LGS) extends the coverage of GTCAO to any part of the sky, increasing dramatically the capability to do high spatial resolution science.
IAC is developing a Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) bench, with the purpose of demonstrating in laboratory solutions of some of the main problems related with solar MCAO to be applied to the European Solar Telescope (EST).
AOLI (Adaptive Optics Lucky Imager) is a state-of-the-art instrument that combines the two best existing techniques to improve spatial resolution: adaptive optics and "lucky imaging". The objective is to obtain images in the diffraction limit in the visible spectrum, with the WHT telescope and, in the near future, with GTC.
The aim of this project is to create a sodium Laser Guide Star (LGS) using the 1m telescope OGS and a sodium dye laser. LGSs are needed by the Adaptive Optics systems in all the large telescopes, to increase their sky coverage for high spatial resolution science.
