Adaptive Optics – Correcting the Image

Adaptive Optics is the correction of optical distortions caused by atmospheric conditions (on telescopes) using spatial phase modulator such as a deformable mirror.

For an example of the image improvements that adaptive optics provides check out the view on this page. A “calibration” of sorts must be made to tune the adaptive optics system. If there is a guide star in the sky near the area of interest then that can be used. If not, most telescopes shoot a laser into the sky that causes a sodium gas to glow about 60 miles out. The telescope focuses on this glow and calibrates the system for it.


Best regards,
Hall T.

Modeling Sky in 3 Dimensions—Using Google Earth to View the Sky

In working with the team at the European Southern Observatory, I learned that most telescopes around the world are oversubscribed for usage by 4x. It’s very hard to get access to a high-end telescope for observation time. Yes. There are that many researchers and scientists working to make out the galaxies, stars, and other astronomical phenomenon.

To this end, the Sloan digital sky survey project seeks to survey and map in 3D the sky. To date, its efforts cover over one quarter of the sky which includes over one million galaxies and quasars. By using a 120 Megapixel camera capturing 1.2 degrees of the sky at a time, the project captures data through high speed software pipes to build a truly unique image of the stars.

Jim Gunn of Princeton started a similar effort with his Galaxy Catalog using the Palomar Observatory

The Samuel Oschin Telescope has been surveying the skies since 1948 and searches for moving objects and variable stars and galaxies. Using a ‘drift scan mode’ the shutter remains open and the telescope fixed at specific declination to capture the movement of the stars which creates a circular pattern.

Google joined the effort by giving its Google Earth the capability to view the sky. You can see more here.

Best regards,
Hall T.

Technologies behind Giant Telescopes

Telescopes for centuries were built with a single reflective mirror. To see further in the distance, the mirror was increased in size. This worked up to about 5 meters in diameter before the mirror starts to deform due to breadth of the mirror and the impact of wind, gravity, and other factors. With the Keck telescope a new age of telescope was born using segmented mirrors each controlled individually.

Key technologies behind a large telescope such as the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) by the European Southern Observatory include

Mirror actuators
Mirror metrology
Wind analysis & control
Mirror Phasing
Friction and drive systems
Option fabrication
Adaptive Optics
Fast optical detectors
Fibre lasers
And more

We'll explore these areas in the coming weeks.

Best regards,
Hall T.

Technologies behind Giant Telescopes

Telescopes for centuries were built with a single reflective mirror. To see further in the distance, the mirror was increased in size. This worked up to about 5 meters in diameter before the mirror starts to deform due to breadth of the mirror and the impact of wind, gravity, and other factors. With the Keck telescope a new age of telescope was born using segmented mirrors each controlled individually.

Key technologies behind a large telescope such as the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) by the European Southern Observatory include

Mirror actuators
Mirror metrology
Wind analysis & control
Mirror Phasing
Friction and drive systems
Option fabrication
Adaptive Optics
Fast optical detectors
Fibre lasers
And more

We'll explore these areas in the coming weeks.

Best regards,
Hall T.

Google Phone – A Better Fit for Virtual Instrumentation than the iPhone?

The Google phone is now available. The Apple iPhone received coverage based on the multitouch screen technology. While that may be helpful to virtual instrumentation what is even more valuable is its ability to find the best price available for mobile services. In the early days of NI working with wireless we invited partners to give presentations on their experience with wireless communications and their test and measurement applications. In one presentation, the partner spent the entire hour talking about the various tradeoffs among the services -- what services worked in what application and how the price varied based on data volume, time of day, etc. The ability to turn all that over to the phone is a big boost to bringing wireless to the virtual instrument application.

The Google phone may also be better positioned for virtual instrumentation given its open platform. Apple took quite a while before offering an SDK for their phone and since then they rigorously monitor what applications are made available. Google’s approach is much more open and inviting to developers letting the developer customize the phone to their application. Customizability is one of the key tenets of virtual instrumentation.

I’m not alone at National Instruments looking for the day that LabVIEW runs full blown on the iPhone, the GPhone or whatever’s next. In this blog post, fellow NIer Deirdre Walsh considers the implications of LabVIEW on the Gphone.

Louis Gray wrote an insightful post on Google’s strength – web apps over its weakness – media downloads which points to more web applications coming to the Google phone.


Best regards,
Hall T.

High-Productivity Computing –Another market index

Here’s a new twist on HPC or high performance computing. It’s called High Productivity Computing which encompasses not only high-speed processing, but also visualization, multicore processing, middleware, processors, storage and more. For stock watchers they created an index of companies that comprise the high performance computing market which includes the major hardware and software vendors in the industry such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, Microsoft, and more. They also include National Instruments. The list of leans toward companies participating in next generation technologies such as FPGAs, cloud computing, and web 2.0 technologies and away from the older generation of industrial automation, test and measurement, and control. For example, Agilent doesn’t come up nor does ABB, or Rockwell.

This may be an interesting index to watch.

Best regards,
Hall T.