About STRATA
STRATA (Stratified Turbulence Reduction through Advanced Telescope-wide Adaptive-optics) upgrades Keck I so that adaptive-optics feeds are delivered to every instrument — an always-on Adaptive Optics (AO²) telescope.
STRATA serves three instrument ports:
Cassegrain (CASS) feeds LRIS-2 and MOSFIRE. Ground-layer adaptive optics over wide (~12′) fields is expected to deliver about 2× better spatial resolution and about 1.5-3× better sensitivity.
Left Nasmyth (LNAS) feeds OSIRIS, Liger, and KPF. At this port, STRATA joins the existing Keck I AO system over narrow (~20″) fields, delivering about 2× better spatial resolution and about 3× better image quality at red-optical wavelengths.
Right Nasmyth (RNAS) feeds ZShooter, with about a 3–8× speed increase for sky-limited observations.
STRATA is in the conceptual design phase. On a technically paced schedule, the earliest phases (likely CASS and LNAS) would be on sky no earlier than 2031. Community feedback is being solicited on architectural decisions.