Other AO Projects

The Adonis/Comeon AO project.
This on-going European project produced what was probably (let me know it you know differently) the first operational AO system outside of the American (and possibly Russian) military.
The Gemini 8m telescope project.
Amongst other goodies, this page contains a nice introduction to the effecs of AO on telescope imaging performance.
The Steward Observatory with their Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics (CAAO)
All sorts of interesting things going on here. Take a look at this newly refurbished page (Feb 1996).
The Starfire Optical Range (SOR)
One of the leading military AO programs, run by Phillips Labs at Kirtland Airforce base, New Mexico. These chaps are a particularly renown for their laser guide star work.
The Imperial College Optics Group
This page contains a good introduction to the theory of Shack-Hartmann sensors. They have a very interesting technique for converting most IR cameras into wavefront sensors, and a couple of video clips showing the system in action.
The Subaru AO team now has their own WWW.
The home page shows results from their prototype AO system used on a telescope. Work for the Subaru AO project is being carried out by the National Astronomical Observatory in conjunction with the Advanced Technology Center of CRL.
The AAT AO system ??.
A system being built by the School of Physics, Sydney University, for the Anglo Australian Telescope.
The UnISIS project..
The University of Illinois Seeing Improvement System (UnISIS) is a Rayleigh laser guide star adaptive optics system at the Mount Wilson Observatory. At present, UnISIS has a single 177 actuator Xinetics deformable mirror and uses an 351nm wavelength excimer laser to create an artificial star 18 km above the telescope for high order wavefront correction.
The Mount Wilson AO project.
The 100" telescope at Mt Wilson is now equipped with a working AO system.
The CFHT's Pueo AOB.
The Pueo Adaptive Optics Bonnet is a 19 degree of freedom Curvature AO system, designed as a flexible user instrument for the CFHT telescope. The system is named after a native Hawaiian Owl.
The University of Chicago ChAOS AO system.
The project has the ultimate goal of producing inexpensive high order laser guide-star AO systems.
The LLNL Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics program.
This program aims to produce a fully featured high order laser guide star AO system. They are currently installing a system at Lick Observatory, and are developing a system for the 10m Keck telescope.
The European Southern Observatory Adaptive Optics Team.
A good introduction to the complexity of organising adaptive optics as a user instrument at an observatory.
The MARTINI and ELECTRA projects.
One of the pioneering efforts in civilian adaptive optics.
The Palomar Adaptive Optics System at JPL.
The Palomar AO system will be a high order natural/laser guide star system.
The WHT AO (NAOMI) project
This project aims to place a "user instrument" class AO system on the GHRIL of the WHT telescope in La Palma.
The MPIA ALFA project.
This is a very ambitious laser guide star system, which is fast approaching completion. This system will be a real testbed for laser guide star technology.
The Nordic Optical Telescope HiRAC AO system.
A very low order AO system (tip-tilt focus and astigmatism), which shows that high order correction is not always necessary.
The Telescope Nazionale Galileo project.
They will have AO on this telescope.
The KECK project.
The most ambitious and difficult AO project in existance, at least of the ones we are allowed to know about!

Other work relating to Adaptive Optics

Micro optical deformable mirror technology from Delft University NL .
Interesting work on producing high spatial resolution deformable mirrors using silicon processing technology.

Commercial AO sources

Here is are some companies who offer products related to adaptive optics. We take no responsibility for the accuracy of the descriptions, since they were supplied by the respective companies.
Xinetics Inc. .
Xinetics Inc. is a company specializing in the fabrication of commercial deformable mirrors and their associated driver electronics. These mirrors use PMN electrostrictive actuators which generate 4 microns of stroke for 100V applied with hysteresis of <1%. In addition to deformable mirrors they also sell cofired multilayer actuators and Silicon Carbide optics.
Adaptive Optics Associates Inc. .
Adaptive Optics Associates Inc. (AOA) has been in the business of supplying AO components and systems to both Government, commercial, and academic customers for 20 years. AOA has provided the wavefront sensor systems for the Starfire Optical Range and is currently fabricating a complete Laser Guide Star AO system for the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg.
Wavefront sciences .
A new company selling Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensors. The software they use is very user friendly and the systems are much cheaper than the others on the market. These sensors are great in any adaptive optics system and can also be used in a variety of other applications like optical quality measurements and laser characterization.
Laplacian Optics .
Laplacian Optics Inc. specializes in the application of curvature wavefront sensing and correction to adaptive optics and wavefront measurement. A complete range of components or turn-key systems, manufactured to your specifications. Curvature based wavefront measurement software offers unique capabilities at low cost.

Would you like to add something here?

I'm still waiting for links to the WWW pages for other AO systems and AO related work. If your AO system/work/company is graced with a WWW page and you'd like a link to it included here, please send me (north@uhifa.ifa.hawaii.edu) the URL and optionally, a very short description of your system/work/company.

If you'd like to change what I've written about your group, just send me a short replacement paragraph.

Olivier Guyon guyon@ifa.hawaii.edu