This award is to fund a critical workshop highly relevant to the future of astronomical adaptive optics in the US over the next decade. This is a timely follow-up to two previous workshops held in 2000 and 2004. The charge of this workshop is to 1) Evaluate technical progress against the AO Roadmap goals (as updated in 2004); 2) Assess the competitive international environment for adaptive optics investment; 3) Integrate AO development goals for telescopes of apertures from 1 to 30 meters; and 4) Recommend priority areas for the next round of Adaptive Optics Development Program proposal solicitation(s).
This roadmap will 1) Provide a summary of the state of adaptive optics technology that will guide the educational and research areas of newly enrolling astronomy graduate students interested in high-angular-resolution science topics; 2) Provide a resource for educators, both graduate level and undergraduate, conducting seminar-level courses on current outstanding questions in astronomy; and 3) Give clear community guidance to educational, commercial, and governmental research organizations by describing the technologies of critical interest to astronomers.
