From: jeffrey E. <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2016 8:39 PM To: Pritzker, Tom Subject: Re: Better Lucky than smart grEAT im off to ted conference. yo=? On S=n, Feb 14, 2016 at 3:15 PM, Pritzker, Tom m> wrote: We went down to=the Magellan telescope (6.5 m) with Wendy Freedman who is a rock star cosm=logist. She recently came to U of Chicago. Once th= dovening was over, they told us that they were going to do something that=had only been done once before in history. One of the geniuses had a=opted an eyepiece to the telescope and we were going to look through it wi=h the naked eye. Turns out that the human eye can (still) do s=me things better than optics. What they had done was developed '=daptive optics' for the secondary mirror such that they were able to r=shape the mirror many times per second and thereby correct for atmospheric=disturbances from moment to moment. This allows the human eye =o observe at a resolution unprecedented in history. Margot was=the 12th person to do this in history, I was the 13th. We obse=ved Sirius (8 light years). It was quite a show. Before turnin= on adaptive optics (580 points on the secondary mirror that can change th= shape of the mirror in order to consolidate the light of the first mirror-into a readable image) you only saw a blur of light. Flip de switch =nd voila, a tight image of the star. This, of course, means a=solutely nothing, but it was better than watching the Bearss. tjp The contents of this email message and any attachments are intended solely =or the addressee(s) and may contain confidential and/or privileged informa=ion and may be legally protected from disclosure. If you are not the inten=ed recipient of this message or their agent, or if this message has been a=dressed to you in error, please immediately alert the sender by reply emai= and then delete this message and any attachments. If you are not the inte=ded recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, disse