Subaru Seminars



Home

News

This Month

Introduction

Observing

Science

Gallery

Information

Site Map


The Subaru Seminar is usually held in Room 104 of the Hilo Base Facility, adjacent to the main lobby. Everyone is welcome to attend. If you are interested in giving a seminar, please contact Subaru seminar organizers (Tae-Soo Pyo, Sherry Yeh, Nagayoshi Ohashi) by email : sseminar_at_subaru.naoj.org (please change"_at" to @).

November 30, Monday, 11:00 am in 104

" 25 years of Adaptive Optics on Mauna Kea "

Olivier Lai

(Subaru Telescope/Gemini Observatory)


Mauna Kea is one of the premier sites in terms of atmospheric turbulence induced image quality for astronomical observation. As such it has been the site of many adaptive optics (AO) developments, starting in the early 90's. I first came to Mauna Kea in 1994 and have worked on Mauna Kea adaptive optics projects for 20 years, at Keck, CFHT and since 2013, I have been a jointly appointed adaptive optics scientist between Gemini Observatory and Subaru Telescope. In this talk, I will review the developments of adaptive optics on Mauna Kea, and my personal experiences of this history. Astronomical observatories, and astrophysics itself, have undergone a profound transformation in the last twenty years towards "Big Science", something I witnessed in adaptive optics. Instruments have become more expensive and productivity metrics have also transformed our approach to risk-taking and uncertainty, with consequences of the application to the scientific method. In fact, most instruments are now too large to be built by observatories themselves: they are the result of multi-institute collaborations and in fact some large research institutes, such as AAO or NRC-HIA, have become almost dedicated instrumentation centers. Furthermore, observatories are developing telescope time exchange programs to try to reduce duplication of effort. This shift from competition to collaboration led to my joint appointment between Gemini Observatory and Subaru Telescope and I will discuss some of the ideas and difficulties that the last three years generated.


Seminars are also held at JAC, CFHT, and IfA.



Copyright (c) 1999-2000 Subaru Telescope, NAOJ. All rights reserved.