Earth based telescopes have limited range. say 5000 light years, Since some radiation is absorbed by our atmosphere. Hence space based telescopes, which increases the range, that can be observed by many folds. I would like to know what you meant by "Earth-based Hubble-quality telescope".
Here is the definitive word on adaptive optics by the experts at the famous U.S. Mount Wilson Observatory and America's most popular website Space.com on space-related issues.
Mount Wilson Observatory
"What is Adaptive Optics?
Light from a distant star or galaxy is distorted as it passes through the turbulent earth's atmosphere, preventing a telescope on the surface of the earth from forming sharp images. Instruments using a new method called adaptive optics can eliminate the blurring effect of the atmosphere.
Thus images formed with the 100-inch telescope using adaptive optics are as sharp as those from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This is the most revolutionary technical development in astronomy since Galileo first used an astronomical telescope in 1609."
SPACE.com -- Adaptive Optics Allow Ground-Based Scopes to Compete With Hubble For Clarity
"
Adaptive Optics Allow Ground-Based Scopes to Compete With Hubble For Clarity
By Greg Clark
Staff Writer
posted: 12:40 pm ET
06 October 1999
One of the greatest limitations of ground-based astronomy is the fact that Earth's atmosphere ever-so-slightly distorts light traveling through it. When viewing large objects or regions of the sky, the distortion is not tremendously troublesome, but as astronomers try to view smaller and smaller areas of the heavens, the distortion becomes more and more noticeable.
This is the problem that created the demand for a space-based telescope that could rise above the turbulent atmosphere to capture clean, clear pictures of faraway celestial objects.
But developments made during the past decade in the field of adaptive optics are enabling astronomers to make corrections for the blurring effects of the atmosphere to get images that are competitive in clarity with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).
"
Image quality, which was once the sole realm of the HST is now being challenged by adaptive optics on telescopes on the ground," said Buzz Graves, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii and an expert in adaptive optics."
Here are information on the reputation of the famed U.S. Mount Wilson Observatory:
Mount Wilson Observatory
" Founded in December 1904 by George Ellery Hale, Mount Wilson Observatory would quickly rise to dominate astronomy worldwide. It was successively home to the world's two largest telescopes as well as the most powerful facilities in existence for studying the sun. Those pioneering instruments and the brilliant scientists who used them revolutionized astronomy through such discoveries as:
* relocating the sun far from the center of the Milky Way galaxy
* the existence of countless galaxies and an enormous Universe
* the magnetic field of the sun and its key role in solar activity
* the recession of the galaxies implying the Big Bang
* populations of stars of various ages
In the twenty-first century,
the Observatory hosts several of the most technologically advanced facilities in the world for studying astronomical objects with unprecedented resolution and clarity. The 100-inch Hooker telescope remains in active scientific service, and the solar towers are daily collecting data representing the world's longest continuous record of the sun."