ANU scientists lead world-first telescope technology

In a project led by scientists at the Australian National University, a new instrument dubbed MAVIS will be fitted to an eight-metre telescope at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, to produce sharper images and remove blurring caused by turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere.

The $57 million instrument will take seven years to build.

It will produce images three times sharper than NASA's Hubble Space Telescope - the world's first space-based optical telescope - and will be among the most powerful ground-based telescopes on Earth.

Francois Rigaut, an ANU professor and MAVIS's principal investigator, likened the visual impairment caused by atmospheric turbulence to objects appearing blurry on horizon during a hot day.

"MAVIS will remove this blurring and deliver images as sharp as if the telescope were in space, helping us to peer back into the early universe by pushing the cosmic frontier of what is visible," Professor Rigaut said.

"The ability to deliver corrected optical images over a wide field of view, using one of the world's largest telescopes, is what makes MAVIS a first-of-its kind instrument. [It] means we will be able to observe very faint, distant objects.

"We will be able to use the new technology to explore how the first stars formed 13 billion years ago, as well as how weather changes on planets and moons in our solar system."

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The consortium will be granted guaranteed observing time with the MAVIS instrument and some funds from the European Southern Observatory for the project.

MAVIS stands for Multi-conjugate-adaptive-optics Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph.

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