We present a summary of activity at the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST) group
during the period 2004-2006. Our main program has focused on technical design and prototyping for future
facility arrays such as the VLTI and Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer, but with a small parallel
effort of focused astronomical observations with COAST, in particular multi-wavelength studies of supergiants.
We report on progress on these and other technical areas over the past 2 years.
We present a summary of the activity of the Cambridge Optical Aperture
Synthesis Telescope (COAST) team and review progress on the
astronomical and technical projects we have been working on in the
period 2002--2004. Our current focus has now moved from operating
COAST as an astronomical instrument towards its use as a test-bed for
strategic technical development for future facility arrays. We have
continued to develop a collaboration with the Magdalena Ridge
Observatory Interferometer, and we summarise the programmes we expect
to be working on over the next few years for that ambitious
project. In parallel, we are investigating a number of areas for the
European Very Large Telescope Interferometer and these are outlined
briefly.
Many astronomical imaging studies, such as those of weak gravitational lensing, call for better angular resolution than is normally possible from the ground over wide fields of view . For many of these studies astronomers need images which show a consistent point spread function across the field even if this comes at the expense of the ultimate in angular resolution at the centre of the field. Adaptive Optics does not show any prospect of being able to achieve fields of view as large as are needed at visible wavelengths and therefore a new technique of delivering high resolution images from the ground must be developed. Electron multiplying CCDs are available that allow images to be taken at high speed without the usual penalty of read noise. We have developed a new technique called Lucky Imaging which achieves high resolution by selecting the better images from a sequence of images, then shifting and adding each to give a much higher resolution output image. Resolutions in the range 0.1-0.2 arc seconds can be obtained routinely under relatively good conditions on a 2.5 metre telescope working in I band (850 nanometres) and using as much as 30% of the images taken. Even under poorer conditions we find that image selection allows the final resolution to be better than the traditional seeing value by a factor of as much as three. This paper describes the technique and some of the results obtained using this method.
This paper aims to give a broad view of the progress achieved in
ground-based interferometry over the past ten years and to assess
quantitatively the factors determining the types of object that can be observed with high resolution over the next ten.
A simple desktop optical interferometer is described and demonstrated as a teaching tool for concepts of long-baseline stellar interferometry. The interferometer is compact, portable, and easily aligned. It sits on a base 8" x 10" and uses an aperture mask which is mounted to rotate within a precision ball-bearing. Fringes produced from an artificial star are observed through a microscope by means of a video camera and are displayed on an overhead television monitor. When the aperture mask is rotated rapidly, the rotating fringe patterns seen on the monitor are observed to synthesize sources that are unresolved by individual holes in the mask. Fringes from an artificial double star are used to illustrate
the relationship between fringe visibility and source structure and to demonstrate image synthesis.
The first-generation COAST array is now primarily operated as a tool
for astrophysics, with any development work aimed at improving
observing efficiency and at prototyping hardware for future arrays. In this paper we summarize the full range of astrophysical results
obtained with COAST in the previous two years. Results of a
program to investigate hotspots on red supergiant stars are
presented in detail.
We present a summary of the status of the Cambridge Optical Aperture
Synthesis Telescope, and review developments at the array through the
period 2000-2002. Summaries of the astronomical and technical
programmes completed, together with an outline of those that are
currently in progress are presented. Since our last report two years
ago in 2000, there have been significant changes in the context for
astronomical interferometry in the UK. We review these developments,
and describe our plans for the near and intermediate term at COAST,
and with colleagues in Europe at the VLTI and in the USA at the
Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico.
The next generation of optical interferometer arrays will require a large number of unit telescopes in the same manner as the VLA if meaningful scientific objectives are to be achieved. Studies based on the five element COAST array show that something like ten to fifteen telescopes are necessary. For such a project to be viable the unit telescopes must be designed from the outset for this task. The basic criteria are as follows: The wavefront quality and stability should be excellent, high optical throughput, autonomous automatic operation, couple efficiently into the beam transport and combination system, plus maintain acceptable unit cost. To achieve these goals a number of novel designs were considered and are described in this paper. Two of the most suitable designs and which had the least technological risk were studied in more detail by Telescope Technology Ltd. and are described in a separate paper.
The use of faint reference stars for the selection of good short exposure images has recently been demonstrated as a technique which can provide essentially diffraction-limited I band imaging from well-figured ground-based telescopes as large as 2.5 m diameter. The faint limiting magnitude and enhanced isoplanatic patch size for the selected exposures technique means that 20% of the night sky is within range of a suitable reference star for I-band imaging. Typically the 1%-10% of exposures with the highest Strehl ratios are selected. When these exposures are shifted and added together, field stars in the resulting images have Strehl ratios as high as 0.26 and FWHM as small as 90 milliarcseconds. Within the selected exposures the isoplanatic patch is found to be up to 50 arcseconds in diameter at 810 nm wavelength. Images within globular clusters and of multiple stars from the Nordic Optical Telescope using reference stars as faint as I~16 are presented. The technique relies on a new generation of CCDs which provide sub-electron readout noise at very fast readout rates. The performance of the selection technique for various astronomical programs is discussed in comparison with natural guide star Adaptive Optics (AO).
This paper is intended to discuss the impact of noiseless CCD detectors in three significant areas of the development of large telescopes and the instruments that go on them. These are (1) CCDs that have all the characteristics that we are used to seeing in CCDs can now be made with negligible readout noise even at higher pixel rates (> 10 MHz) and will allow rather different approaches to the design of instrument is generally, (2) the technique of achieving diffraction limited imaging in ground-based telescopes known as Lucky Astronomy in which images are taken at high speed has been demonstrated to work under a variety of different conditions and (3) some suggestions as to how these methods may be applied directly to much larger diameter telescopes in order to achieve high resolution imaging and spectroscopy without the expense of laser guide stars or multi-conjugate adaptive optics.
We present a summary of the status of the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST). Since our last report we have concentrated on improving both the efficiency of use of the array and its astrophysical capabilities. In particular we have achieved useful improvements in throughput, detector sensitivity and the efficiency of securing measurements of visibility amplitudes and closure phases. With five telescopes fully operational, COAST is now being used routinely for parallel programs of astrophysics and as a technical test-bed for its proposed successor, the Large Optical Array--LOA.
A three year seeing measurement campaign was conducted at the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) using a Shack- Hartmann (S-H) wavefront sensor. An analysis of the spatio- temporal autocorrelation of the S-H centroid motion across the WHT pupil demonstrates the partial validity of Taylor's hypothesis, but at the same time highlights its limitations in the context of ground-based interferometry. So-called wavefront `boiling' is shown to play a major, perhaps dominant role in the evolution of phase errors on the timescales of practical interest. This conclusion is reached by comparing the coherence times measured from the fluctuation of reconstructed wavefronts with those inferred from Taylor's hypothesis using the wind speed determined from the S-H spatio-temporal autocorrelation. Nevertheless it appears that knowledge of the wind speed can be a reliable indicator of coherence time, provided a suitable calibration is established. The practical problem of measuring the turbulence coherent time using portable equipment is explored. The promising method of centroid velocity variance is investigated and the wind speeds measured this way are seen to agree with those determined from the S-H spatio-temporal autocorrelation.
At the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST), first-generation photon counting avalanche photodiodes (APDs) have been used as the pupil-plane fringe detectors in the optical regime. These are being replaced with EG&G's super-low k (`SliK') APDs, which have an exceptionally low dark count (fewer than 100 counts per second) and high detection efficiency (up to 70% at 700 nm). The new detectors have increased the limiting magnitude of the telescope, enabling the observation of targets previously too faint to be seen. We shall discuss the operation of these devices at COAST and present new interferometric observations of stellar objects at visible magnitudes of eight and fainter.
We present the latest astronomical results from the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST). COAST is a first-generation stellar interferometer, which uses an array of small (40 cm) separated telescopes to perform high-resolution imaging at visible and near-infrared wavelengths. The new science results from COAST exploit two recently-added capabilities of the COAST array, namely the ability to observe in any over the infrared J, H and K bands as well as at visible wavelengths, plus operation with five telescopes. We present contemporaneous observations of the red supergiant Betelgeuse at three wavelengths in the red and near-infrared. These data show that the apparent symmetry of the stellar disk is a strong function of wavelength, but that the bright spots seen in visible light are consistent with a convective origin. Data obtained using all five array elements on the symbiotic star CH Cygni reveal an elliptical distortion of the disk of the red giant, possibly related to mass transfer of a compact companion.
This paper reviews the current performance of the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope as an imaging array. Tests of the hardware and methods of measuring fringe visibility and closure phase are described in the context of prospects for a Large Optical Array.
One of the critical components of a separated element interferometer is the beam combiner. The initial alignment of the separate optical elements that make up this device and the maintenance of that alignment is usually problematic. Fiber optic devices provide an answer to the alignment difficulties but in single mode form have a restricted bandwidth. This paper discusses the design of a number of devices to overcome these short comings. These beam combiners can be small in size, their dimensions largely governed by the beam diameter. Large diameter beams are only necessary to reduce diffraction effects on the journey from the telescope to the beam combiner. On arrival the beam diameter can then be reduced to suit the beam combiner. Small, stable and low weight beam combiners are an advantage on the ground but even more so in space applications. Designs for combining the beams for large numbers of telescope are described.
Visibility measurements obtained with optical astronomical interferometers are corrupted by random wavefront distortions of atmospheric origin. In this paper we discus how spatial filtering using pinholes can lead to increased measured visibility, improved signal-to-noise ratio and reduced dependence on seeing fluctuations. The potential for calibrating visibility measurements without resorting to a separate calibrator target is also discussed. Results of preliminary pinhole experiments carried out with the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope are presented.
A low-resolution CCD spectrometer has been installed at COAST to provide multi-wavelength fringe measurements across the band 650-950 nm. The measurements are based on the analysis of time-series of channeled spectra. Laboratory tests and stellar observations are presented. The advantages and limitations of the system are discussed.
There are difficult problems involved in building a near-infrared interferometer which uses more than two elements simultaneously. These problems have been overcome at the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope(COAST). This has allowed us to make the first closure phase measurements on an astronomical source in the infrared.
We describe a scheme for fast, low noise readout of an infrared focal-plane array detector, capable of adequately sampling pupil plane fringes on three simultaneous baselines, as well as a procedure for aligning a many-component beam-combiner in the infrared. Finally, the performance of the working COAST infrared system is discussed.
The Cambridge optical aperture synthesis telescope (COAST) is a four element interferometer which measures visibility amplitudes and closure-phases. It produced its first images in 1995 and is now in a complete form, very similar to the original conception. In this paper we discuss the design and current status of the interferometer.
In September 1995 the Cambridge optical aperture synthesis telescope (COAST) became the first optical interferometer to produce an image of a stellar source from phase-closure and visibility amplitude measurements. These observations demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of operating long-baseline optical/near-infrared interferometers for high dynamic range high-resolution imaging. Here we present these and subsequent observations made with COAST and describe the methods used to analyze such data.
The Cambridge optical aperture synthesis telescope (COAST) has now been developed to the point where stellar images with a resolution of 20 mas can be produced in a routine manner. Based upon our experiences in the design and commissioning of COAST this paper discusses the possible design of a next generation interferometer.
The Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope, COAST, is a four-telescope array for high resolution imaging using measurements of complex visibilities and closure phases. This paper describes what its component parts are and why.
We have used interferometric methods to track the atmospheric phase fluctuations at two astronomical sites: the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos in the Canary Islands, the site of the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (WHT), and the Lord's Bridge observatory in Cambridge, the location of the Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST). At both sites the atmospheric perturbations are well characterized by Kolmogorov turbulence. At the WHT we find no obvious evidence for saturation of the turbulence over the range of spatial scales investigated, although there are rapid variations in the seeing on timescales of minutes.
The Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope, COAST, now has the capacity to measure visibility amplitudes and closure phase for stellar sources. This paper summarizes the current status of the instrument and how the data is analyzed.
The COAST group in the University of Cambridge have a lot of operational experience of using fast guiding systems to control the pointing of up to four separate telescopes simultaneously as well as a lot of operational experience of using array CCD systems and avalanche photodiode photon counting systems for signal detection. This paper looks at the advantages and disadvantages of these systems for fast guiding and wavefront sensing applications.
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