Tue. 14 Dec @ 3:30pm (Gemini Seminar Room)

John Tonry - IfA

Wide Field Adaptive Optics: the Future of Ground-based Imaging?

ABSTRACT: "Image motion compensation with a small aperture telescope can yield quite high Strehl ratios; at a good site it is possible to get 0.2" images with a 1.5-m telescope in the I band. I will describe how it is possible to achieve these gains with a 9-m effective aperture over a one degree field of view. Scientific applications for such a telescope abound. It is ideal for studies of the shear from weak gravitational lensing, offering more faint galaxies with better resolution. In one hour it would be possible to get 5 percent distances to hundreds of galaxies in a cluster at 10,000 km/s with using SBF. For deep cosmological surveys similar to the Hubble Deep Field, this telescope could be a factor of 25,000 more efficient than HST. Detection rates of MACHOs, both in our galaxy and the LMC or M31, would be very high. Searches for Kuiper Belt objects and near Earth objects would be extremely rapid with this telescope."