Historic view
Modern Astronomy
ELTs will be 16x sharper than Hubble ...but CHARA is 17x sharper than ELTs
HST
though a 30m telescope does have 150x the collecting area ...at 150x the cost
Near future
ELTs
GMT
Rubin
TMT
What's an arcsecond?
1 mas ~ a half dollar seen from ~ 4,000 miles
1 microarcsecond ~ a period in the Apollo mission manuals on the Moon
human eye angular resolution ~ 1 arcminute
1 arcsecond ~ width of a hair at arm's length
The Array is capable of resolving 200 microarcseconds,
~ the size of a nickel coin seen from 10,000 miles.
"the CHARA Array continues to offer exceptional opportunities for scientific discovery using the longest operating baselines in the world among optical/near-IR interferometers"
Image credit: ESO
TelAO
MIRX
MYSTIC
SILMARIL
SPICA
CHARIOT
PAVO
VIS BEAMS
METROLOGY
STS/STST
BEAM SAMPLERS
BEAM Reduction
LabAO
Future Plans
more
targets
new
discoveries
more papers!
more
users
efficiency
resolution
sensitivity
-
Efficiency
- AC at telescopes
- more automated alignment and tracking
- more lab path
-
Sensitivity
- new/upgraded adaptive optics
- 2m central telescope
- 1m → 2m (4x the area)
- more telescopes
-
Resolution
- CMAP
- W5/Channel 13 site (1100m)
CHARIOT
(CHARA Array Integrated Optics Testbed)
collaboration with Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP)
and soon UCLA?
- expansion:
- - more beams
- - more colors
- - astrophonics
- - nuller
Future: Image an exoplanet during transit!
- 250 known exoplanets with host stars accessible to CHARA.
-
the silhouette of the planet could be measured
-
know the star, know the planet
NGC 4151
-
Central structure resolved
- ring-like structure viewed at an inclination
- dusty disk surrounding the black hole
Early results from CHARA already show that the innermost dusty region in NGC 4151 is aligned perpendicularly to the jet axis.
Future: more "AGN"s Supermassive Black Holes
- reaching outside of astronomy
- using teleportation to connect telescopes
- Brookhaven National Lab, University of Arizona, and others
The future: Astrophotonics and Quantum Optics....
bonus slides
diameter
Lawson 2003, S&T
Limb darkened vs Uniform disk
binarity
Separation
flux ratio
(B/λ)
← diameter
