Date: Sep 24, 2012 Author: Chris Reidy Source: Boston Globe (
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Boston Micromachines Corp., a Cambridge company specializing in deformable mirrors, said that one of its products is currently deployed in a telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California.
The company said that is Multi-DM product is being used in an autonomous laser adaptive optics instrument called Robo-AO.
"Robo-AO brings adaptive optics technology, normally limited to much larger telescopes with larger budgets, to small and mid-size telescopes, increasing their imaging power," Boston Micromachines said in a press release. "Because it automates the processes, efficiency is increased, less effort is required, and researchers are able to carry out many more observations per night than doing it manually."
The company added that the combination of Multi-DM and Robo-AO "dramatically improve the quality of the telescope's images by correcting for the degrading aberrations caused by atmospheric turbulence."
According to the company, its devices can not only be used to enhance celestial images blurred by the earth's atmosphere, but they can also be used for imaging biological tissue and the human retina.
