About CAAO

Beginning with its founding in 1994, the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics (CAAO) focused primarily on the development of adaptive optics techniques for enhancing the resolving power of both imaging and spectrographic instruments at large ground-based telescopes. These goals mandated a highly interdisciplinary team including members from the fields of astronomy, optical sciences, control theory, computer science, and electronic engineering. CAAO has developed close ties with the United States Air Force, a pioneer in adaptive optics technologies over the last 25 years. Since the declassification of much of the Air Force's work in 1992, the partnership between CAAO and the Air Force has led to very fruitful collaboration, with technology transfer from each to the other.

The mission of the Center is to support the advancement of astronomical science by providing the means by which to exploit observations at very high resolutions. The Center demonstrates this focus through its current activities and plans for state-of-the-art adaptive optics systems and related technologies for the many large telescope projects of Steward Observatory, in cooperation with partners from elsewhere on campus, across the country, and around the world. These devices significantly reduce the main limitation of ground-based telescopes, the severe reduction of image quality that results from turbulence in Earth's atmosphere. Operating at near-infrared wavelengths, the Center's AO systems allow imaging and spectroscopy at the limit of resolution of optical diffraction. These advances in astronomers' abilities to view the heavens represent the biggest leap in astronomical technology since the invention of the telescope itself.

Currently, the Center explores and implements a broad range of instrumental and analytical techniques for both ground- and space-based observations. Adaptive Optics systems are not the Center's end products; the enhancement of astronomical science that comes from Adaptive Optics and AO-enabled techniques is an ultimate CAAO goal. This requires of the Center parallel development of both ancillary instrumentation and data reduction capabilities, as well as the invention of new observational techniques, especially space-based techniques for the detection of exo-Earths.