Adaptive-optics corrections available for the whole sky

Adaptive-optics systems can in principle allow a telescope to achieve performance at its theoretical maximum (limited only by diffraction), by correcting in real time for the distortion of starlight by atmospheric turbulence1. For such a system installed on an 8-m-class telescope2,3, the spatial resolution and sensitivity could be up to 100 times better than conventional imaging4,5. Adaptive-optics corrections have hitherto been achieved only for regions of the sky within a few arcseconds of a bright reference source. But it has been proposed theoretically that by using multiple guide stars, the tomography of atmospheric turbulence could be probed and used to extend adaptive-optics corrections to the whole sky6,7. Here we report the experimental verification of such tomographic8 corrections, using three off-axis reference stars ∼15 arcsec from the central star. We used the observations of the off-axis stars to calculate the deformations of the wavefront of the central star, and then compare them with the real measured values. This tomographic approach is found to reduce variations in the wavefront by ∼92%. Our result demonstrates that a serious barrier to achieving diffraction-limited seeing over the whole sky has been removed.