Скачать или смотреть Testing Further Upgrade of Subaru Telescope’s Laser Guide Star System

On the night of December 8, 2025 (Hawai‘i Standard Time), four laser guide stars were experimentally launched from the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, Hawai‘i. This marked the first test of the laser tomography adaptive optics system “ULTIMATE-START,” being developed by Tohoku University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). This video was recorded inside the Subaru Telescope enclosure.

Stars appear to twinkle in the night sky because light from stars is disturbed by atmospheric turbulence. When observed using ground-based telescopes, atmospheric turbulence blurs images of stars. Even the Subaru Telescope, located near the summit of Maunakea at an altitude of about 4,200 meters, cannot entirely avoid the effects of atmospheric turbulence, and stellar images remain blurred.

The technology used to correct this atmospheric distortion is called adaptive optics. Adaptive optics systems measure atmospheric turbulence using a nearby bright star (a guide star) and correct for it, enabling sharp astronomical images comparable to those from a space telescope. However, it is sometimes very challenging to find a suitable natural guide star.

A laser guide star system addresses this challenge by creating a laser guide star, an artificial guide star using a laser beam. Tohoku University and NAOJ are developing the laser guide star tomographic adaptive optics system “ULTIMATE-START,” which uses four laser guide stars in the sky generated by splitting a laser beam from the Subaru telescope  into four beams. By applying tomographic techniques, the system reconstructs the three-dimensional structure of atmospheric turbulence. With ULTIMATE-START, the Subaru Telescope is expected to get sharper astronomical images.

This video captures the laser launch inside the Subaru Telescope enclosure during testing of ULTIMATE-START. The angular separation of the four laser guide stars is so small that they cannot be separated in this video.
(Credit: NAOJ)

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