MAORY

MAORY is a new adaptive optics module for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) based on Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) — designed to help compensate for distortions caused by turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere. MAORY is designed to work with the imaging camera MICADO and with a second future instrument. MICADO needs stable and sharp images across a large field of view in the near-infrared (wavelengths from 0.8–2.4µm) in order to allow scientists to make very precise measurements of the positions, brightness, and motions of stars. The adaptive optics provided by MAORY and the telescope helps it to achieve this.

MAORY will use at least two deformable mirrors (including the deformable mirror in the telescope) designed to correct for different layers of turbulence high above the telescope. It measures the light from a configuration of six sodium laser guide stars, arranged in a circle on the sky, to obtain a kind of three-dimensional mapping of the turbulence. The laser guide stars are projected from around the circumference of the telescope’s primary mirror. This technique was successfully demonstrated on-sky by the Multi conjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator (MAD) on the Very Large Telescope.