Stellar intensity interferometry: Prospects for sub-milliarcsecond optical imaging

Using kilometric arrays of air Cherenkov telescopes at short wavelengths, intensity interferometry may increase the spatial resolution achieved in optical astronomy by an order of magnitude, enabling images of rapidly rotating hot stars with structures in their circumstellar disks and winds, or mapping out patterns of nonradial pulsations across stellar surfaces. Intensity interferometry (once pioneered by Hanbury Brown and Twiss) connects telescopes only electronically, and is practically insensitive to atmospheric turbulence and optical imperfections, permitting observations over long baselines and through large airmasses, also at short optical wavelengths. The required large telescopes (～10 m) with very fast detectors (～ns) are becoming available as the arrays primarily erected to measure Cherenkov light emitted in air by particle cascades initiated by energetic gamma rays. Planned facilities (e.g., CTA, Cherenkov Telescope Array) envision many tens of telescopes distributed over a few square km. Digital signal handling enables very many baselines (from tens of meters to over a kilometer) to be simultaneously synthesized between many pairs of telescopes, while stars may be tracked across the sky with electronic time delays, in effect synthesizing an optical interferometer in software. Simulated observations indicate limiting magnitudes around m_V = 8, reaching angular resolutions ～30 μarcsec in the violet. The signal-to-noise ratio favors high-temperature sources and emission-line structures, and is independent of the optical passband, be it a single spectral line or the broad spectral continuum. Intensity interferometry directly provides the modulus (but not phase) of any spatial frequency component of the source image; for this reason a full image reconstruction requires phase retrieval techniques. This is feasible if sufficient coverage of the interferometric (u, v)-plane is available, as was verified through numerical simulations. Laboratory and field experiments are in progress; test telescopes have been erected, intensity interferometry has been achieved in the laboratory, and first full-scale tests of connecting large Cherenkov telescopes have been carried out. This paper reviews this interferometric method in view of the new possibilities offered by arrays of air Cherenkov telescopes, and outlines observational programs that should become realistic already in the rather near future.     

I S L A An Astronomical World Space Observatory for The First Century of the 3 rd Millenium

ISLA will be an astronomical observatory, operating at the upper limit of our planet Earth atmosphere, offering space like observing conditions in most aspects. ISLA can be maintained easily, modified easily if necessary, always kept at the state of the art and operated for very extended periods without polluting the stratosphere. ISLA is ideally suited to become the first world space observatory as the observing conditions are very much space-like – diffraction limited angular resolution, very low ambient temperature, remote control – however ISLA is easily accessible, telescopes and instruments can be continuously improved and ISLA's costs corresponds only to those of ground-based modern astronomical installations like the ESO-VLT-, KECK- and GEMINI-observatories. The cost of observing and experimenting on ISLA will be orders of magnitudes lower than those of building and operating any space telescope, allowing the astronomers of developing nations to participate in the ISLA observatory within their limited financial possibilities as competent and full partners. ISLA's 4-m and 2-m telescopes will operate diffraction limited from 0.3 μm in the optical, over the infrared, far-infrared to the sub-mm spectral range. ISLA's individual telescopes will permit imaging with 20 milli-arcsec spatial resolution in the optical, 5 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope. ISLA's telescopes can be combined to form an interferometer with a maximum baseline of 250 m with nearly complete coverage of the u,v plane. Interferometric resolution will be of the order of 20 micro-arcsec for the optical. ISLA will thus offer spatial resolution comparable or better than the intercontinental VLBI radio interferometers. ISLA's telescope efficiency will be many orders of magnitude better than comparable ground-based telescopes. The light collecting power of ISLA's interferometric telescopes will be orders of magnitudes greater than the future space interferometers under discussion. ISLA, being an aviation project and not a space project, can be realised in the typical time scale for the development of aviation: about 5 years. ISLA's cost for the whole observatory, including its movable ground station etc. will be of the order of a typical medium size ESA space mission. ISLA's lifetime will be in excess of many decades, as it can easily be maintained, modernised, repaired and improved. ISLA will become the origin of a new astronomical international organisation with worldwide participation. ISLA's telescopes will be of the greatest importance to all astronomical fields, as it will permit to study much fainter, much more distant objects with microscopic spatial resolution in wavelength regions inaccessible from ground. ISLA's many telescopes permit easily simultaneous observations at many wavelengths for rapidly varying objects, from continuously monitoring the surfaces of the planets in our solar system, surfaces of close-by stars, nuclei of galaxies to QSO's. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

天文光学望远镜轴系驱动方式发展概述

该文首先介绍了已投入使用的2.5米口径以上的25架地平式光学望远镜和11架赤道式光学望远镜轴系驱动方式,并概述了天文光学望远镜轴系驱动及其相关技术的发展过程;然后对目前国际上在研的6架大型光学望远镜和预研的10架极大光学望远镜轴系所采用的驱动形式进行了归类;最后分析了未来极大光学望远镜轴系驱动的发展趋势和与之相关的研究内容.     

Wide-field tracking with zenith-pointing telescopes

Equipped with a suitable optical relay system, telescopes employing low-cost fixed primary mirrors could point and track while delivering high-quality images to a fixed location. Such an optical tracking system would enable liquid-mirror telescopes to access a large area of sky and employ infrared detectors and adaptive optics. Such telescopes could also form the elements of an array in which light is combined either incoherently or interferometrically. Tracking of an extended field requires correction of all aberrations including distortion, field curvature and tilt. A specific design is developed that allows a 10-m liquid-mirror telescope to track objects for as long as 30 min and to point as far as 4° from the zenith, delivering a distortion-free diffraction-limited image to a stationary detector, spectrograph or interferometric beam combiner.     

History of solar telescopes

Solar observations have been done with telescopes since their invention—already Galileo looked at the Sun. Despite the Sun’s unusual brightness, telescopes which specialize in solar observations are fairly recent, dating from the late nineteenth century onwards. Today, many solar telescopes have rather little in common with nighttime telescopes. They are adapted to high light flux, a limited range of declination, and to the specifications of solar spectrographs and polarimeters. This paper presents the history of the modern optical solar telescope on the ground and in space, the accompanying evolution of scientific capabilities, and a brief outlook into the future.     

Gnat — A global network of astronomical telescopes

New generation small telescopes can and should be very complementary facilities for the new large telescopes and for space astronomy. With CCD imaging detectors as part of their instrumentation package, they are most efficient research tools for many research programs. In addition, linking a number of them together into a "global network of astronomical telescopes" appears to make a good deal of sense. A new non-profit organization, GNAT, Inc., has been established to be the catalyst for such a network.Operated by AURA, Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, Washington D.C.     

The history of radio telescopes, 1945–1990

Forged by the development of radar during World War II, radio astronomy revolutionized astronomy during the decade after the war. A new universe was revealed, centered not on stars and planets, but on the gas between the stars, on explosive sources of unprecedented luminosity, and on hundreds of mysterious discrete sources with no optical identifications. Using “radio telescopes” that looked nothing like traditional (optical) telescopes, radio astronomers were a very different breed from traditional (optical) astronomers. This pathbreaking of radio astronomy also made it much easier for later “astronomies” and their “telescopes” (X-ray, ultraviolet, infrared, gamma-ray) to become integrated into astronomy after the launch of the space age in the 1960s. This paper traces the history of radio telescopes from 1945 through about 1990, from the era of converted small-sized, military radar antennas to that of large interferometric arrays connected by complex electronics and computers; from the era of strip-chart recordings measured by rulers to powerful computers and display graphics; from the era of individuals and small groups building their own equipment to that of Big Science, large collaborations and national observatories.     

8~10m级光学／红外望远镜的高分辨率光谱仪

介绍并比较了KeckSubaruVLTHET及Gemini中的5架8～10m天文望远镜的高分辨率光谱仪,分析这些仪器与2～4m级望远镜的阶梯光栅光谱仪或Coude光谱仪相比所采用的新设计思想和新技术.     

Phasing segmented mirrors using defocused images at visible wavelengths

Plans for future optical telescopes of diameter more than 10 m are based on segmented mirrors, made up of hundreds or even thousands of segments. A challenge for these telescopes is the alignment in piston (cophasing) where phase differences between individual segments have to be reduced to a small fraction of the observing wavelength in order to avoid degradation of image quality.
Based on the phase discontinuity sensing method used at the Keck telescopes to measure small piston errors using infrared wavelengths, we develop a new method that allows fast high-precision measurements of large piston errors even at visible wavelengths.     

Optical intensity interferometry with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

With its unprecedented light-collecting area for night-sky observations, the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) holds great potential for also optical stellar astronomy, in particular as a multi-element intensity interferometer for realizing imaging with sub-milliarcsecond angular resolution. Such an order-of-magnitude increase of the spatial resolution achieved in optical astronomy will reveal the surfaces of rotationally flattened stars with structures in their circumstellar disks and winds, or the gas flows between close binaries. Image reconstruction is feasible from the second-order coherence of light, measured as the temporal correlations of arrival times between photons recorded in different telescopes. This technique (once pioneered by Hanbury Brown and Twiss) connects telescopes only with electronic signals and is practically insensitive to atmospheric turbulence and to imperfections in telescope optics. Detector and telescope requirements are very similar to those for imaging air Cherenkov observatories, the main difference being the signal processing (calculating cross correlations between single camera pixels in pairs of telescopes). Observations of brighter stars are not limited by sky brightness, permitting efficient CTA use during also bright-Moon periods. While other concepts have been proposed to realize kilometer-scale optical interferometers of conventional amplitude (phase-) type, both in space and on the ground, their complexity places them much further into the future than CTA, which thus could become the first kilometer-scale optical imager in astronomy.     

3D spectroscopy of z ∼ 1galaxies with gemini

Area spectroscopy has significant advantages over both traditional imaging and long-slit spectroscopy: it is more efficient in observing time, and yields substantially more information. Through Integral Field Units, area spectroscopy is becoming an essential part of new facility instruments on the latest large telescopes. We have been undertaking a programme on the Gemini 8-m telescopes to demonstrate the power of integral field spectroscopy, using the optical GMOS spectrograph, and the new CIRPASS instrument in the near-infrared. Here we present some preliminary results from 3D spectroscopy of z ∼ 1 objects, mapping the emission lines in a 3CR radio galaxy and in a gravitationally lensed arc. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cross calibration of telescope optical throughput efficiencies using reconstructed shower energies for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

For reliable event reconstruction of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs), calibration of the optical throughput efficiency is required. Within current facilities, this is achieved through the use of ring shaped images generated by muons. Here, a complementary approach is explored, achieving cross calibration of elements of IACT arrays through pairwise comparisons between telescopes, focussing on its applicability to the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). Intercalibration of telescopes of a particular type using eventwise comparisons of shower image amplitudes has previously been demonstrated to recover the relative telescope optical responses. A method utilising the reconstructed energy as an alternative to image amplitude is presented, enabling cross calibration between telescopes of varying types within an IACT array. Monte Carlo studies for two plausible CTA layouts have shown that this calibration procedure recovers the relative telescope response efficiencies at the few per cent level.     

New telescopes in China

This paper covers the main aspects of three new optical telescopes: a 1.26 m aperture one for use in the infrared, a 1.56 m aperture one for astrometry, and a 2.16 m reflector for general astrophysical work. It also briefly mentions the 13.7 m telescope designed for the mm wavelength band, the first VLBI in China and the meter wavelength aperture synthesis telescope. All these telescopes, optical and radio, are now being built in China.Paper presented at the IAU Third Asian-Pacific Regional Meeting, held in Kyoto, Japan, between 30 September–6 October, 1984.     

Some comments on large telescope astronomy in Britain and Australia

Many of the major British telescopes are described in this volume by other speakers directly involved with those facilities, so this contribution will concentrate on aspects of the operation of the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) which seem particularly relevant to the JNLT. Some requirements for the success of the new very large optical telescopes are also discussed.Paper presented at the Symposium on the JNLT and Related Engineering Developments, Tokyo, November 29–December 2, 1988.     

Strong gravitational lensing with SKA

The advent of new observational facilities in the last two decades has allowed the rapid discovery and high-resolution optical imaging of many strong lens systems from galaxy to cluster scales, as well as their spectroscopic follow-up. Radio telescopes have played the dominant role in the systematic detection of dozens of new arcsec-scale lens systems. For the future, we expect nothing less! The next major ground- and space-based facilities, especially the Square Kilometer Array can discover tens of thousands of new lens systems in large sky surveys. For optical imaging and spectroscopic follow-up a strong synergy with planned optical facilities is needed. Here, we discuss the field where strong gravitational lensing is expected to play the dominant role and where SKA can have a major impact: The study of the internal mass structure and evolution of galaxies and clusters to z 1. In addition, studies of more exotic phenomena are contemplated. For example, milli- and micro-lensing can provide a way to measure the mass-functions of stars and CDM substructure at cosmological distances. All-sky radio monitoring will also rapidly develop the field of time-domain lensing.     

Optical surveys for space debris

Space debris—man-made non-functional objects of all sizes in near-Earth space—has been recognized as an increasing threat for current and future space operations. The debris population in near-Earth space has therefore been extensively studied during the last decade. Information on objects at altitudes higher than about 2,000 km is, however, still comparatively sparse. Debris in this region is best detected by surveys utilizing optical telescopes. Moreover, the instruments and the applied observation techniques, as well as the processing methods, have many similarities with those used in optical surveys for ‘astronomical’ objects like near-Earth objects (NEOs). The present article gives a general introduction to the problem of space debris, presents the used observation and processing techniques emphasizing the similarities and differences compared to optical surveys for NEOs, and reviews the results from optical surveys for space debris in high-altitude Earth orbits. Predictions on the influence of space debris on the future of space research and space astronomy in particular are reported as well.     

Numerical study of a 20W class QCW pulsed sodium guide star laser's performances at five sites in China

In the past few years,Chinese astronomical community is actively testing astronomical sites for several new optical/infrared ground-based telescopes.These site testing campaigns conducted were mainly focused on fundamental performances of the sites,such as cloud coverage,seeing,temperature,etc.With increasing interests in sodium laser guide star adaptive optics for these new telescopes in the Chinese astronomical community,it is interesting to investigate the performance of the laser guide star at these sites,especially considering that the sodium laser guide star's on-sky performance is significantly influenced by sites' local performances,such as geomagnetic field,sodium layer dynamics,density of air molecule,etc.In this paper,we studied sodium laser guide star's performance of a 20 W class Quasi Continuous Wave(QCW) pulsed laser developed by TIPC with numerical simulation for five selected sites in China.     

High resolution solar telescopes

The advantages and disadvantages of the configurations for high resolution solar telescopes are discussed within two broad groups: those with steerable mountings and those with fixed mountings. We then consider simple optical tests, stabilization of the internal optical path, windows, vibration, guiding and alignment systems, improving the observations, and solutions for large-aperture telescopes for Stokes polarimetry observations. This review does not address all the problems. It is not a compendium of solar telescopes, nor does it include any discussion of focal-plane instrumentation.Operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. Inc., under contract with the National Science Foundation.     

漂移扫描CCD用于地球同步轨道卫星观测的初步结果

对于地球同步轨道卫星,目前国内主要采用两种观测手段,即小光电望远镜短曝光观测和天文望远镜跟踪恒星(或卫星)观测.事实上,这两种手段都各自存在不足,尤其对于暗弱目标问题更加显著.利用CCD漂移扫描模式和凝视模式相结合观测地球同步轨道卫星具有明显的优势,小口径望远镜(口径约25cm)就能够获得高质量的目标和恒星圆星像与高精度的定位结果.本文重点阐述了获得高精度地球同步轨道卫星光学位置与星等的原理、方法及步骤;最后,利用实测资料的数据处理结果,分析了所获得的地球同步轨道卫星的内部精度及其误差源.     

Detecting neutrino transients with optical follow-up observations

A novel method is presented which will enhance the sensitivity of neutrino telescopes to identify transient sources such as Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) and core-collapse Supernovae (SNe). Triggered by the detection of high energy neutrino events from IceCube or other large scale neutrino telescopes, an optical follow-up program will allow the identification of the transient neutrino source. We show that once the follow-up program is implemented, the achievable sensitivity of IceCube to neutrinos from SNe and GRBs would increase by a factor of 2–3. The program can be realized with a small network of automated 1–2 m telescopes and has rather modest observing time requirements.