JPL Interferometry Center of Excellence's Optical Long Baseline Interferometry News

Edited by Peter Lawson

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Editorial: 18 December 2000

Peter R. Lawson.
18 December 2000

The year 2000 was an exceptional year for long-baseline stellar interferometry. Most notable is the success of measurements of Cepheid variables (Lane et al, Nature; Nordgren et al, Astrophys.J) and the acquisition of first startlight fringes with IONIC. The NPOI has recently completed the hardware installation for its 6-way beam combiner, and both the Keck Interferometer and the VLTI are nearing completion of the hardware required for first-fringes with their siderostats. The CHARA Array is commencing science measurements with its first baseline, and is in the process of commissioning the other baselines (the north-east pointing arm will be next). The UK has decided to join ESO which will quite likely allow for a closer collaboration between the groups at Garching and Cambridge.

The IAU not only promoted the Working Group on Optical/IR Interferometry, but elevated it to an official status at the Division level. It was with the intention of creating a Commission on optical/IR interferometry that these changes occurred, which promises well for the future of stellar interferometry within the IAU and for the community in general both for 2001 and in the years that follow.

[I would ask your indulgence that the remainder of this editorial concerns mostly a description of OLBIN and the Michelson Summer Schools, which are subjects with which I can most easily editorialize. I had almost given up writing editorials because most of the news is contained in the listings on the News page of OLBIN, and anything that isn't there is either unsubstantiated rumour or best related at a later date. This editorial is a sort of early New Year's resolution on my part.]

Notes on OLBIN

My own work on OLBIN has continued much as in the previous two years since I took it over from Stuart Shaklan. The changes that you see on these pages mostly happen in the early morning over a cup of coffee, with the permission and at the expense of the other projects which I am involved with at JPL. Although I continue to receive very few contributions to OLBIN, I've been please to note that in the past year their number has been increasing.

My principal sources of information include the European Forum HRA, the ESO Press-release email exploder, and the AAS Job Register. I also scan the classifieds of Physics Today, and occasionally do a selected search for papers (from my usual list of suspects) in the electronic table of contents listed on the OLBIN Preprints page. I also check for changes to the main entries in the Links page. My preferred search engine is now Google, which I use on (increasingly rare) opportunities to randomly scan for new items.

Much of the content of OLBIN is only accessible from the News links in the 2000, 1999, and 1998 listings. This is particularly true of photographs, which by now should all be collected in the Photos page. The Phone Book continues to be updated at irregular intervals, although is probably also due for an overhaul (I continue to make use of it as my own personal directory and maintain updates for those of you with whom I am in most frequent contact). Much of OLBIN is due to be sorted out to be made more accessible. A search engine may also prove useful, but is currently beyong my limited programming ability in HTML. Let it be noted that I am aware parts of OLBIN are looking neglected, and these will be addressed in the next 12 months.

I had thought that an email forum for OLBIN would be a useful resource for the community, as it is in Europe, but my attempts in 1998 attracted little or no attention and the progress of the oi-data forum seems to be following a similar route. Although I could easily establish such a Forum, there doesn't appear to be enough interest in the community to merit the effort. And so it remains very low on my list of priorities for OLBIN.

1999 Michelson Summer School Course Notes

We have now run out of paper copies of the Course Notes and will most likely be printing another run in the new year. A copy was submitted to Physics Today for review and if it is selected may be featured in an upcoming issue.

At the invitation of Chris Lindensmith, the Course Notes for the 1999 Summer School, Principles of Long Baseline Stellar Interferometry, are being issued on CDROM along with PDF versions of the TPF Book (of which Chris was co-editor) and the SIM Book. The CDROM, titled Origins Interferometry is being assembled at the time of writing and will be made available at the AAS meeting in San Diego in January 2001. [Only 500 paper copies of the Course Notes were printed in its first run, but 2500 copies of the CDROM will be printed and distributed (again free of charge). I don't know what the means will be to obtain a copy of the CDROM, although quite likely it will be either through Debi Fambro as before, dfambro@huey.jpl.nasa.gov, or through Chris Lindensmith at chrisl@squid.jpl.nasa.gov.]

The version of the Course Notes included on the CDROM includes minor corrections to the text and an update of the html references. The only error of note is a correction on page 282 in the figure and first paragraph, where pi/2 should replace pi/4 to correctly represents a quarter-wavelength phase shift.

The PDF files are also now free of errors in ligatures in the Helvetica fonts. This took me quite a while to figure out, and so I'll record it here, for lack of any better place. The LaTeX files were converted to PostScript from dvi files using the following instruction
dvips -Pcm -Pcmx -o outputfile inputfile
which loads in the PostScript the computer modern fonts without writing over the previously loaded Helvetica fonts which had replaced the sans-serif fonts of normal LaTeX. The conversion from PostScript to PDF was performed using ps2pdf with the following script (Courtesy of Theo ten Brummelaar):

#/bin/bash
if (test $# -eq 0)
echo usage: makepdf file(no .dvi)
else
dvips -Ppdf -o $1.ps $1.dvi
/usr/bin/ps2pdf -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dCompatibilityLevel=1.2
-dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true $1.ps $1.pdf
fi I should add that I see the 1999 Course Notes as a work in progress. There are of course omissions and oversights in the notes, most notably a suitable introduction to astrometry, an introduction to space interferometry, and an overview of the design and prospects for fiber and integrated optics. The course notes represent a predominantly ground-based and American (shall I say Canadian?) viewpoint, which should be offset in future versions. It is my current intention to expand and publish a more complete hardback edition sometime in 2003 to reflect changes in the 2002 Summer School (which will be a revised version of the 1999 School). I am pleased that the course notes have proven popular, and I would like to increase their range of subject matter and general usefulness.

2000 Michelson Summer School Proceedings

Although I said I would not be editing published papers from the 2000 Summer School, I have been slowly assembling the web-based proceedings, which will include the audio and viewgraphs (overheads) that were used there, along with the abstracts, the list of references and selected photographs. Those who are curious how things are going may be interested in having a look at

http://olbin.jpl.nasa.gov/michelson/

There are numerous incomplete links which only reflect the fact that I'm not finished editing it yet. I have digitized most of the audio files and converted them to RealAudio format and linked them to the respective pages. All of the viewgraphs that were originally in PowerPoint form have also been converted to PDF and made available. There are however many viewgraph sets that were done by hand and have not yet been scanned in. These will probably take several months before they are included in the proceedings. The scanning has not yet even started.

2001 Michelson Summer School

I am also slowing putting together an agenda for the 2001 Summer School, which will include laboratory work of data reduction for selected interferometers, with an emphasis on NPOI and the strategies of Synthesis Imaging with closure phases. Ken Johnston has kindly let me continue organizing the school even though it will be in Flagstaff this coming year, May 21-25, 2001. The dates are earlier than last year to allow for the schedule of operations at NPOI. NPOI ceases observerations in July and August due to the summer rains in Arizona and so the school is being held earlier. A first announcement for the school should be issued in early January to coincide with the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego.

The following will probably be included in the school:

For those interested in the interferometric imaging experiments, it is based on a Demo by Donald Wilson of the COAST group for a exhibit at the Royal Society in 1997 or 1998 (and also partly based on an incomplete memory I had of a demo Michael Large put together of the Molongolo Observatory Synthesis Telescope at the University of Sydney).

Marie Curie Fellowships

An announcement should be forthcoming early in the new year of the availability of Marie Curie Fellowships for graduate level research in interferometry at selected institutions in Europe. Funds for the fellowships have been obtained from the European Union through the efforts of Vincent Coudé du Foresto at the Observatory of Paris.

Peter Lawson
18 December, 2000

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