Adaptive optics has revolutionized visible light astronomy conducted from the Earth’s surface. The most advanced installations use a powerful laser to make a glowing spot in the upper reaches of our planet’s atmosphere. The AO system uses that artificial star to instantly compensate for the ever-shifting air, giving the telescope almost Hubble-sharp images.

The Planetary Society supports Debra Fischer’s Exoplanets Laser project at Yale University. The exquisitely precise lasers it utilizes will help us find the Earth-like, habitable planets that surely pepper the galaxy.

Charles Townes invented the maser before he got around to the laser. Examine a radio telescope receiver and you’ll find a maser. If ET phones us, we’ll hear the call because of Townes. It’s the maser that got him his Nobel Prize.

Townes eventually tired of researching lasers. He figured there were plenty of other good people working on them—so, he helped figure out how the signals from many telescopes could be combined to act as if they were one humongous instrument. He measured the mass of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. He helped start the field of astrobiology as one of the discoverers of organic molecules in space. Oh, and he was NASA’s chief science advisor as we landed humans on the moon.

LASER = Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. It’s difficult to imagine anyone who stimulated more advances than Townes. Thank you, Charles. Your light will shine forever.