A Sharper Image: Seeing Colliding Galaxies with Adaptive Optics

Adaptive Optics is a technology that detects and corrects changing distortions in optical systems. It has been applied to great effect during the past decade to correct astronomical telescopes for blurring due to turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere. This talk will describe how Adaptive Optics works, and how it is helping us to learn about colliding galaxies and their black holes, as well as outflows from the cores of nearby galaxy mergers.

Speaker: Claire Max, UC Santa Cruz