July 12, 2010: Anamorphic Art

[xoxoxoBruce]

That seems like a viable way to measure the distortion of any spectrum coming through our atmosphere. But it's a long way from the source of most of the things their looking at, to our thin candy shell. I guess they know enough about the properties of the whole spectrum, including how they travel, so correcting for our atmosphere they can determine if anything else along the path is affecting it.

[Lamplighter]

Exactly so, xoB.
Once our atmospheric distortions are resolved by adaptive optics systems,
other distortions would require explanation and/or involve further research.

Even the governmental funding of the Keck Observatory's installation of
Next Generation of Adaptive Optics (NGAO) equipment was justified, in part,
on the detection and precise measurements of dark matter affecting light
passing by or through gravitationally lensed galaxies.
(This was only one of a number of top priority studies - described here)

,