For astronomers, it’s a magical moment: you’re staring at a monitor, and a blurry image of a cosmological object sharpens up, revealing new details. We call this “closing the loop,” a reference to the ...

Yes, it can! This is one facet of adaptive optics, which astronomical observatories can use to compensate for distortions in astronomical images caused by our atmosphere. Let’s set the stage first: ...

Have you ever wondered why stars appear to “twinkle” in the night sky? These fast and seemingly random changes in the color and brightness of stars arise from how light interacts with different layers ...

Scientists have produced the finest images of the Sun's corona to date. To make these high-resolution images and movies, the team developed a new 'coronal adaptive optics' system that removes blur ...

The 5.4 km free-space quantum communication link between the University of Ottawa and the National Research Council Canada, where real-time atmospheric turbulence measurements were conducted to train ...

In the quest for ultra-secure, long-range quantum communication, two major challenges stand in the way: the unpredictable nature of atmospheric turbulence and the limitations of current optical ...

Geometric optics is a confusing subject for many physics students, who often first encounter the subject in introductory college physics classes. Traditional instruction in geometric optics is not as ...