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How does adaptive optics reduce image distortion caused by atmospheric turbulence?

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Telescope Aerial view of the Keck Observatory's twin domes, which are opened to reveal the telescopes. Keck II is on the left and Keck I on the right.

Adaptive optics is a sophisticated technology used in ground-based telescopes to improve image resolution by counteracting the blurring effects of atmospheric turbulence.12

When light from celestial objects enters Earth's atmosphere, turbulence creates unstable regions of varying air density. This causes the light path to shift randomly, resulting in images that appear to flutter, dance, or become diffuse.3

To mitigate this, adaptive optics systems employ a mechanism where the surface of the telescope's mirror is adjusted rapidly in real-time. By continuously modifying the mirror's shape, the system compensates for the wavefront distortions introduced by the atmosphere, allowing the telescope to achieve a level of clarity that would otherwise be limited by atmospheric conditions to about one arc second. This process enables astronomers to capture much finer detail, effectively overcoming the practical resolution limits typically imposed by the atmosphere on surface-based observatories.2