The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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StarTiger's Autonomous Refocusing Mechanism System, ARMES, is based on automatically comparing the phase shift per CCD pixel of a pair of auxiliary detectors on either side of the main camera. These two detectors estimate the correct depth by settling on the focus from their slightly differing perspectives where mutual phase shift is least and their views are most similar. In the image above, the target stage is exaggeratedly moved along the optical axis to have defocus visible to the human eye.