How the new telescope technology captured this image of Neptune from here on Earth

It's big, cold, blue and 4.3 billion kilometers long. But astronomers using advanced optical technology have taken a Neptune image that is almost as sharp as that of the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit.

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory, nestled in the mountains of Atacama Chile Desert, has recently been equipped with a new type of adaptive optics called laser tomography. Adaptive optics corrects images of the turbulence of the Earth's atmosphere

When scientists and amateur astronomers take pictures of stars, galaxies, planets or any celestial object, their main adversary is the atmosphere of the Earth. The temperature fluctuations and the density of the air cause turbulence, which makes observation and photography difficult. That's really why we see the stars "twinkle".

But the new features of VLT can be adjusted for that.

Four incredibly bright lasers project 30-centimeter diameter columns into the sky that create an artificial guide star on which the telescope focuses.

Starlight is used to determine atmospheric turbulence. The telescope then performs 1,000 calculations per second and modifies the shape of one of its mirrors, correcting the distortion.

Look at the four powerful lasers that constitute a crucial part of adaptive optics systems on the Very Large of the Southern Observatory Telescope (ESO / F Kamphues)

In Wide Field Mode It can correct the turbulence of atmospheric air up to one kilometer above the telescope. But in narrow-field mode (think of zooming in with your camera), it can correct almost any turbulence, resulting in much sharper images.

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The European Southern Observatory plans to use the newer optical to take a closer look at objects such as supermbadive black holes, dense collections of stars called globular clusters and supernovas

Watch the video below to get an idea of ​​the difference between the mode wide field and narrow field mode with adaptive optics turned on

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