A group of scientists from the University of Hawaii’s Center for Adaptive Optics founded the company in 2000. These experts in adaptive optics were leaders in the revolution of ground based, deep space imaging. Before the invention of adaptive optics in the 1990’s, astronomy telescopes were limited in spatial resolution by the significant distortion effects of the thermal boundary layers in the atmosphere. Placement atop mountains such as Mauna Kea and Haleakala in Hawaii provides some relief, but these telescopes still performed well below their diffraction limits. Now, the adaptive optics solution implemented on these telescopes offer improvements in spatial resolution in deep space imaging by up to 20 times, opening up the capability to construct larger and higher magnification telescopes.
