LAO Hands On!

at the CfAO Adaptive Optics Summer School, Santa Cruz

I have led the laboratory component of the CfAO Adaptive Optics Summer School in Santa Cruz in 2007-2009.  

Over two days, 60 graduate students, postdocs, and researchers engage in laboratory inquiries focused on adaptive optics.  The three activities are:

1.  Aligning the AO Demonstrator
2.  Investigating the Eye with Wavefront Sensors
3.  Understanding Fourier Optics


Instructors (past and present):
J.D. Armstrong                            Jennifer Hunter                           Andrew Norton
Ian Crossfield                              Jess Johnson                                Nicole Putnam
Tuan Do                                      Luke Johnson                               Ethan Rossi
Mike Fitzgerald                           Jessica Lu                                    Scott Severson
David Harrington                         Holly Maness                                Sylvana Yelda
Adam Hickenbotham                    Katie Morzinski

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The AO Demonstrator

at the Laboratory for Adaptive Optics, Santa Cruz

The AO Demonstrator is a $25k self-enclosed adaptive optics system exclusively for education.  

Centered around an AgilOptics 37-actuator deformable mirror, the demonstrator corrects turbulence at 30 Hz.  Three of these systems have been used in 2-hour activities to teach the principles of adaptive optics to over two hundred undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs.

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