AdapTube: Adaptive Optics animations for tutorial purpose

As it happens in most scientific fields, many Adaptive Optics concepts and instrumental layouts are not easily understandable. Both in outreach and in the framework of addressing experts, computer graphics (CG) and, in particular, animation can aid the speaker and the auditor to simplify concept description, translating them into a more direct message. This paper presents a few examples of how some instruments, as Shack-Hartmann and Pyramid wavefront sensors, or concepts, like MCAO and MOAO, have been depicted and sometimes compared in a more intuitive way, emphasizing differences, pros and cons. Some example linking animation to the real world are also outlined, pushing the boundaries of the way a complicated concept can be illustrated embedding complex drawings into the explanation of a human. The used CG software, which is completely open source and will be presented and briefly described, turns out to be a valid communication tool to highlight what, on a piece of paper, could seem obscure. This poster aims at showing how concepts, such as Pyramid WFS, GLAO, MCAO and GMCAO, sometimes very difficult to explain on paper, can be much more easily outlined by means of dedicated animation SW. Blender is a very powerful freeware SW, used by our group since years to make tutorial videos and explanatory movies, a few examples of which are presented here.