The Starfire Optical Range, as viewed from a helicopter.

Three green lasers being fired at a single spot in the sky from the Starfire Optical Range.

A sodium laser being fired from the Starfire Optical Range, in this case being used to pick up information about atmospheric turbulence to assist in adaptive optics calculations.

Starfire Optical Range is a United States Air Force research laboratory on the Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Their primary duty, according to their official website, is to "develop and demonstrate optical wavefront control technologies", and they are a division of the Directed Energy Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2000x3008, 4406 KB) Original caption: Though the caption states that this is a sodium laser, this is actually misleading as the lasing medium in the Starfire Optical Range LIDAR laser seen here is really a dye laser which is tuned to... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2000x3008, 4406 KB) Original caption: Though the caption states that this is a sodium laser, this is actually misleading as the lasing medium in the Starfire Optical Range LIDAR laser seen here is really a dye laser which is tuned to... A deformable mirror can be used to correct wavefront errors in an astronomical telescope. ... The United States Air Force (USAF) is the aerospace branch of the United States armed forces. ... Kirtland Air Force Base is located in the southeast quadrant of Albuquerque, New Mexico, adjacent to the Albuquerque International Sunport. ... Nickname: The Duke City Official website: http://www. ... The United States Air Force Research Laboratory with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was created in October 1997. ...

Among their optical equipment, they have a 3.5 meter telescope (which they claim is "one of the largest telescopes in the world equipped with adaptive optics designed for satellite tracking"), a 1.5 meter telescope, and a 1.0 meter beam director.

According to an article published on May 3, 2006 in the New York Times, research is being conducted at the laboratory into how to use ground-based lasers to disable satellites (that is, as an anti-satellite weapon). According to the article, research is being conducted so that the ground-based laser would be able to use adaptive optics to send up a distorted beam which would then be focused by atmospheric turbulence onto its target. The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... Lasers range in size from microscopic diode lasers (top) with numerous applications, to football field sized neodymium glass lasers (bottom) used for inertial confinement fusion, nuclear weapons research and other high energy density physics experiments. ... A satellite is any object that orbits another object (which is known as its primary). ... Anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) are weapons designed to be used against artificial satellites. ... A deformable mirror can be used to correct wavefront errors in an astronomical telescope. ...

References

• William Broad, "Administration Researches Laser Weapon", New York Times (3 May 2006).[1]

External links

• Official SOR website
• Starfire Optical Observatory page at globalsecurity.org

Coordinates: 34.964343° N -106.462551° E Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically); large version (pdf) The geographic (earth-mapping) coordinate system expresses every horizontal position on Earth by two of the three coordinates of a spherical coordinate system which is aligned with the spin axis of the Earth. ...

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