Laser has scientists seeing stars
By Natalie Banach
Jan. 13, 2005 9:00 p.m.
Researchers throughout the University of California and
California State University systems observed images of faraway
galaxies with Hubble Space Telescope-like precision this week, all
from the safety of a grounded observatory.
A team of astronomers, which includes UCLA professors and
graduate students, used its knowledge of adaptive optics to view
distant galaxies and stars with a fresh, new perspective.
Adaptive optics is a field of study which looks at optical
effects, such as the blurriness seen when searching the night sky
through a telescope, and compensates for those deficiencies.
The ever-changing field of adaptive optics has allowed
astronomers to view the internal structures of galaxies with the
strength and precision of the Hubble telescope, said James Larkin,
a UCLA researcher on the team.
“Before it was like trying to see a dime a mile away.
Hubble enabled people to see the internal structures of a galaxy
such as the Milky Way. Now, adaptive optics lets us do that on the
ground,” Larkin said.
Using a new laser guide star system for adaptive optics at the
W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the researchers saw detailed
images of colliding galaxies with black holes at their cores.
“Keck tries to undo the turbulence, or twinkling, of
stars. Ultimately, it sets the quality of the images. It’s
the reason the Hubble Space Telescope was built originally,”
Larkin said.
Conventionally, to measure turbulence researchers would be
limited to very bright stars, but the Keck laser allows them to
excite stars very high up in the sky, Larkin said.
The Keck system has been an integral aspect of the research, and
Thursday morning UCLA researchers were packaging $4 million worth
of equipment to send to Hawaii, Larkin said.
Led by Jason Melbourne, a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz, the
team will continue its research by imaging more and more of the
skies, said Matthew Barczys, a UCLA graduate student.
“Right now, we’ve got about 500 galaxies and we want
to get to about 2,000,” Barczys said.
The implications of this research deal with the study of how
galaxies came about.
The reason behind all the work, Barczys said, is to study
different ages of galaxies and “how they got to be the way
they are today.”
The team of researchers will be working on instruments which use
adaptive optics in order to see even further into the night
sky.
“Our ultimate goal is to see how the Milky Way came to
be,” Larkin said.
