Abstract

A prototype two-telescope stellar interferometer with a 1.5-m base line has been used to track the white-light fringes, 0.4–0.9 μm, from Polaris. Continuous fringe phase and amplitude measurements were made with ∼220-photon/4-msec integration time and 1.27-cm² collecting area under 2-arc sec seeing conditions. The same control algorithm should be able to track fringes from an 8.7-mg star using the light from two 13-cm (5-in.) telescopes and a 10-msec integration time under 1-arc sec seeing conditions. When tracking, the servo maintained equal path lengths to 0.1-μm rms in the two arms of the interferometer, thus cancelling the path-length variations caused by earth rotation and atmospheric turbulence. In the future, two-color phase measurements will make optical aperture synthesis and optical very long-base-line astrometry possible.

© 1980 Optical Society of America

Atmospheric phase measurements with the Mark III stellar interferometer

M. Mark Colavita, Michael Shao, and David H. Staelin
Appl. Opt. 26(19) 4106-4112 (1987)

Two-color method for optical astrometry: theory and preliminary measurements with the Mark III stellar interferometer

M. Mark Colavita, Michael Shao, and David H. Staelin
Appl. Opt. 26(19) 4113-4122 (1987)

Long- baseline optical interferometer for astrometry

Michael Shao and David H. Staelin
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 67(1) 81-86 (1977)

Orbiting stellar interferometer for astrometry and imaging

M. M. Colavita, M. Shao, and M. D. Rayman
Appl. Opt. 32(10) 1789-1797 (1993)

Dispersion in stellar interferometry: simultaneous optimization for delay tracking and visibility measurements

John Davis, William J. Tango, and Erik D. Thorvaldson
Appl. Opt. 37(22) 5132-5136 (1998)