Giant laser creates an artificial star to clear the sky

February 27, 2013
giant_star_eso

(Credit: ESO)

Death Star’s superlaser? No, a new, improved laser that acts as an artificial star, as a reference to monitor atmospheric turbulence for the Very Large Telescope in Chile, compensating for the atmosphere’s distortions and creating much sharper images, reports New Scientist.

The laser shoots 90 kilometers into the atmosphere, where it interacts with the 10-kilometer-thick layer of sodium atoms left around our planet by meteoroid impacts. The laser makes the sodium fluoresce, producing a bright point of light