ESO creates stars in the upper atmosphere!...So are stars really light years away?

ESO creates stars in the upper atmosphere!...So are stars really light years away?

Paranal Observatory is flagship facility of the European Southern Observatory located at 2635 m AMSL in the Atacama Desert of Chile.

This ESO Article says:

"The Earth’s Atmospheric turbulence causes an undesired effect in astronomy: twinkling stars, which result in blurred images.

Adaptive optics corrects for distortions introduced by the atmosphere. To do this, the AO system needs the light from a sufficiently bright star that is close to the target in the sky as a reference & for many targets there are no suitable stars close by. This is where the lasers come in. The 4 Laser Guide Star Facility (4LGSF) sends 4 laser beams into the skies to produce four artificial stars by exciting sodium atoms located in the atmosphere at an altitude of 90-110 km. The fluorescent light that is emitted by the sodium atoms and collected by the telescope is affected by the atmosphere in the same way as the light emitted by real stars is."