Telescope Array Begins Interferometric Imaging of Stars at Optical Wavelengths
APR 01, 1996
Optical telescope arrays are breaking into the milliarcsecond imaging business, long a monopoly of very‐long‐baseline radio telescope arrays.
DOI: 10.1063/1.2807575
The extraordinary images of the binary star Capella published in the February issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and reproduced on this page, herald the arrival of an important new astronomical technique: interferometric imaging with separated optical telescopes. The images were produced by John Baldwin and coworkers at the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (coast), a Y‐shaped interferometric array of four modest, movable telescopes, with a maximum separation of 100 meters. Coast sits alongside the much larger radio telescopes of Cambridge University’s Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory.
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© 1996 American Institute of Physics
