Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T19:48:55.635Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The VLT Interferometer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2016

T. R. Bedding
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-W8046 Garching bei München, Federal Republic of Germany
J. M. Beckers
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-W8046 Garching bei München, Federal Republic of Germany
M. Faucherre
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-W8046 Garching bei München, Federal Republic of Germany
N. Hubin
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-W8046 Garching bei München, Federal Republic of Germany
B. Koehler
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-W8046 Garching bei München, Federal Republic of Germany
O. von der Lühe
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-W8046 Garching bei München, Federal Republic of Germany
F. Merkle
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-W8046 Garching bei München, Federal Republic of Germany
N. Zhu
Affiliation:
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-W8046 Garching bei München, Federal Republic of Germany

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

One of the observing modes available with the ESO Very Large Telescope will be coherent combination of the light received by up to four 8 m unit telescopes and several 1.8 m auxiliary telescopes. The location of the main telescopes is fixed, while auxiliary telescopes can be moved among some 30 observing stations. The locations of these stations were chosen to augment the (u, v) coverage of the unit telescopes as well as to function as an independent interferometric array.

The 8 m telescopes will be equipped with adaptive optics to correct for seeing-induced wavefront aberrations. This wavefront correction will be complete at near-infrared wavelengths, giving the interferometer very high sensitivity in this spectral regime. This paper gives a brief description of the VLT Interferometer and an update on its status.

Type
Optical and Infrared Interferometers and Arrays
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1994 

References

Beckers, J. M. et al., 1990, The VLT Interferometer: I. Proposed Implementation, in SPIE Proc. 1236, p. 108, and several other papers in the same Proceedings.Google Scholar
Beckers, J. M., Faucherre, M., Koehler, B., and von der Lühe, O., 1992, A progress report on the implementation of the VLT Interferometer, in Proceedings of the ESO Conference on High-Resolution Imaging by Interferometry II, edited by Beckers, J. M. and Merkle, F., p. 775, Garching bei München, F.R.G., October 1991.Google Scholar
Beckers, J. M., 1991, Interferometric imaging with the Very Large Telescope, J. Opt. (Paris), 22, 73.Google Scholar
Enard, D., 1992, ESO VLT: A status report on telescopes and enclosures, in Progress in Telescope and Instrumentation Technologies, edited by Ulrich, M.-H., p. 25, Garching bei München, F.R.G., April, 1992.Google Scholar
Faucherre, M., Koehler, B., von der Lühe, O., Merkle, F., and Zhu, N., 1992, The VLT Interferometer: Current status and expectations for the next 20 years, in Targets for Space-Based Interferometry, ESA SP-354, p. 91, Beaulieu, France, December 1992.Google Scholar
Greenaway, A. H., 1991, Optical aperture synthesis, Meas. Sci. Technol., 2, 1.Google Scholar
Merkle, F. and Hubin, N., 1991, Adaptive optics for the European Very Large Telescope, in Active and Adaptive Optical Systems, edited by Ealey, M. A., Vol. 1542 of SPIE Proc. Ser. , p. 283, San Diego, California, July 1991.Google Scholar
Merkle, F. et al., 1989, VLT Optics: Design of the Telescope Optics, VLT Report 58, European Southern Observatory, December 1989.Google Scholar
Plathner, D. and Beckers, J. M., 1992, The design of the Auxiliary Telescopes for the VLT Interferometer, in Proceedings of the ESO Conference on High-Resolution Imaging by Interferometry II, edited by Beckers, J. M. and Merkle, F., p. 939, Garching bei München, F.R.G., October 1991.Google Scholar
von der Lühe, O., Beckers, J. M., Faucherre, M., Koehler, B., Merkle, F., and Zhu, N., 1992a, Interferometry with the Very Large Telescope, in Solar Physics and Astrophysics at Interferometric Resolution, ESA SP-344, edited by Damé, L. and Guyenne, T.-D., p. 247, Paris, France, February 1992.Google Scholar
von der Lühe, O., Beckers, J. M., and Braun, R., 1992b, The configuration of the VLT Interferometer on the Paranal site, in Proceedings of the ESO Conference on High-Resolution Imaging by Interferometry II, edited by Beckers, J. M. and Merkle, F., p. 959, Garching bei München, F.R.G., October 1991.Google Scholar
Wieringa, M. H., 1992, An investigation of the telescope based calibration methods ‘redundancy’ and ‘self-cal’, Exp. Astron., 2, 203.Google Scholar