On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 14:03:07 GMT, Jan Panteltje
wrote:

I have been wondering if somehow fluid lenses could be used for adaptive
optics in a telescope...

The most basic AO correction is for image shift (usually called
tip/tilt). Any system needs to address this, and it isn't obvious how
fluid lenses could do so.

Beyond that, there are many high order corrections. While this can
involve a change in focus, which a variable lens could correct for, the
corrections are typically achieved by altering the wavefront over
multiple zones- something a single lens can't do.

The usual actuator for AO is a flexible mirror, and this is not the
difficult part of the problem. A flexible mirror can be made quite
inexpensively these days, especially if there were some high volume
application.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com