Laser focus: ELT’s adaptive optics

This artist’s animation demonstrates ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope’s (ELT) impressive adaptive optics system. The ELT is located on the high and dry Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and while this is among the best climates in the world for ground-based telescopes, turbulence in the atmosphere can still significantly disrupt observations. Using up to eight bright lasers to create artificial stars in the night sky, the ELT will correct for these distortions in real time.