Editorial of August 3, 2001

Fabien Malbet (Observatoire de Grenoble) and Peter Lawson (JPL) have set up an OLBIN discussion group, The Optical Long Baseline Interferometry News Forum. The site includes an email exploder and an archive of submissions. To subscribe, simply send an email to sympa@listes.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr with the subject heading "sub olbin". Once subscribed, messages can be sent to the site by emailing to olbin@listes.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr. Messages will then be automatically rebroadcast to other subscribers and also archived at the site. To unsubscribe send a message with "signoff olbin".

News

01.12.21

In spring 2002 the SIM project will issue a Request for Proposals for contract work relating to the definition of its reference "grid" stars. Ground-based precision radial velocity measurements (to about 20 m/s) will be required to characterize the candidate stars. More information is now available at the SIM Research Opportunities site in the near future.

01.12.19

CDROM Proceedings of the 2001 Michelson Interferometry Summer School will soon be available. If you are interested in having a copy, please email lawsonhuey.jpl.nasa.gov with the Subject "2001 CDROM" and your mailing address in the body of the text. A Description of the CDROMS is also available.

01.12.18

An Update on Terrestrial Planet Finder Program is now available following the TPF Final Architecture Review which took place in San Diego 11-13 December 2001. The update briefly summarises the missions that were proposed by the contractors. This meeting concluded the 18-month contract work which involved TRW, Ball Aerospace, Boeing-SVS, Lockheed Martin, and their academic partners (Courtesy of Peter Lawson).

01.12.14

The First Announcement for the 2002 Michelson Interferometry Summer School has been issued. The 2002 Summer School will repeat, update, and expand upon the material from the 1999 school. Due date for applications is 15 March 2002.

01.12.07

A coordinated Press Release from ESO and Press Release from PPARC have announced that the UK will join ESO on July 1, 2002. The ESO Press Release reads in part that "the UK will pay the usual annual contribution to ESO from the date of its entry. It has also been decided that as an important part of the special contribution to be made on entry, the UK will deliver the VISTA infrared survey telescope to ESO as an in-kind contribution." Details of UK funding for joining ESO are described in the PPARC Press Release.

01.11.30

Christian Hummel has made available the NPOI Calibrator list as part of the newly available NPOI Support Pages. Also available are the help pages for the OYSTER data reduction package. The NPOI pages have now moved to a new home at ftp.nofs.navy.mil/projects/npoi/. (Courtesy of C.A. Hummel and H.M. Dyck.)

01.11.19

MIDI obtained first fringes in the lab in Heidelberg on 30 October 2001. Examples of the fringes can be found at on the MPIA MIDI webpages: First fringes with MIDI. Also see the illustrations and photographs of MIDI from the NFRA webpages.

01.11.19

Programs related to Darwin that are sponsored by the European Space Agency are described courtesy of Malcolm Fridlund.

01.11.16

Pierre Kervella defended his Ph.D. thesis Optical Interferometry and the VLTI: application to Cepheid variables at the Observatory of Paris on 14 November 2001. Part of his PhD work concerned the development of VINCI, the commissioning instrument of the VLTI. The text of the thesis (in French) and his contributed papers (in English) are now available as PDF files.

01.11.06

The Department of Physics at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez campus anticipates a tenure track position starting August 2002. The University of Puerto Rico is a member of the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Consortium and research in the Physics department includes both adaptive optics and interferometry. For more information see the OLBIN Jobs Page or email Dr. Jeff Friedman, jeff@feynman.upr.clu.edu. Review of applications will start by mid-February and continue until the position is filled.

01.11.05

On 29 October 2001 the VLTI achieved first fringes with the 102-m baseline separating ANTU and MELIPAL, two of the four VLT 8.2-m Unit Telescopes. Fringes were first obtained on Alpha Eridani (Achernar) with VINCI at 2.2 microns. See the ESO Press Release and in particular the Scientific Appendix, and the Visibility Curve for Psi Phoenicis. (Courtesy of Markus Schoeller.)

01.11.01

A new 'OHANA web page from the Observatoire de Paris documents progress towards the upcoming observing run on the CFHT, which will take place 31 January 2002. The observations will take starlight from the focus of the adaptive optics bonnet, PUEO, and feed it into a single monomode fiber. The scope of the 'OHANA program is described in the minutes of the December 2000 Meeting See in particular the photographs of the optics and detector as of October 2001. (Also see the Hawaii-based 'OHANA site and a GroupPhoto.)

01.10.31

The Naval Research Lab has been invited to be the government lead for the Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) effort. One of the unique aspects of the MRO program is the intended use of adaptive optics with medium-sized telescopes. The Program Lead for MRO is Dr. Van Romero and the Chief Scientist is Dr. David Westpfahl, both of New Mexico Tech. New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology is the financial instrument for the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Consortium. The group at NRL will provide guidance and help on the project. (Courtesy of Charmaine Gilbreath, NRL.)

01.10.26

An example of Fringes from the 330 m Baseline of the CHARA Array, are available courtesy of Theo ten Brummelaar.

01.10.25

The Call for Papers (PDF) has now been issued for the 2000 SPIE interferometry meeting, Interferometry for Optical Astronomy II, which will be chaired by Wes Traub (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory). The meeting will take place 22-28 August 2002 at the Waikoloa Hilton on the Big Island (north of Kona, Hawaii). When the meeting web site is available, it will appear at http://www.spie.org/as. Abstracts are due 28 January 2002.

01.10.24

Roger Griffin (The Observatories, Cambridge University) has been promoted to Professor of Observational Astronomy.

01.10.23

The North Hawaii News (Waimea, HI) ran an article on the Keck Interferometer project on October 11, 2001. The text and photographs from the article are available courtesy of Gerard van Belle.

01.10.22

The Univesity of Puerto Rico Interferometer is being built in cooperation with the Los Alamos National Labs at the Fenton Hill Observatory, 35 miles west of Los Alamos in New Mexico. A Project Description describes the current status of the work, and a Picture Gallery shows construction on site and telescope installation.

01.10.19

Recent photographs of the Construction of the LBT telescope, dating from September and October 2001 are available at the LBT Arizona website. (Warning there are no thumbnails on these pages and the September page may take a long time to load). A good selection of other pictures and animations of the LBT can be found at the Ohio State University LBT Web Site.

01.10.19

The Infrared Interferometry Group at MPIfR now has a GIF movie of fringes they observed using IOTA. See the web page titled "IOTA JHK-Spectro-Interferometry of the Mira Star T Cep." The spectrum shows absorption features, speckles, and fringes.

01.10.18

The Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy is advertising the availability of Postdoctoral Positions with work related to infrared long-baseline interferometry. The announcement will also appear in the November 2001 AAS Job Register. Deadline for submissions is 5 December 2001. For more information contact Gerd Weigelt at weigelt@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de.

01.10.17

The Michelson Fellowship Program invites applications for the 2002 Michelson Graduate Student Fellowships and Postdoctoral Fellowships. The application deadline is 21 December 2001. (Courtesy of Rolf Danner.)

01.10.16

With a view to making OLBIN more accessible to non-specialists, the Home page of OLBIN has been redrafted in table form with more descriptive information, and a Introduction page to tutorial links has been added to complement the Links page.

01.10.11

The COAST Web Pages have been updated to include MP3 and Wave files of fringes on the fringes and power spectra page. Listen to the single-baseline fringes (MP3 and WAV formats) and then see if you can hear fringes from three baselines in phase closure data (MP3 and WAV formats).

01.10.10

The German center for infrared and optical interferometry, Frontiers of Interferometry in Germany (FrInGe), was established in September in Heidelberg. The center is to coordinate efforts by German institutions in obtaining, reducing, and interpreting optical/IR interferometric data. The center is located at MPIA in Heidelberg, with scientific director Thomas Henning, and technical coordinator Uwe Graser. More detailed information is available through the PDF document Frontiers of Interferometry in Germany: German Center for Infrared Optical Astronomy. (Courtesy of Christoph Leinert.)

01.10.08

The 2002 Henri Poincare Postdoctoral Fellowships have now been advertised. The fellowships are for research at the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, which hosts the GI2T and which also has involvement with the development of MIDI and AMBER for the VLTI. The closing date for applications is 1 January 2002.

01.10.08

More recent views of the Keck Interferometer are available, including publicity photos and an amazing panorama from the roof the observatory building. (Courtesy of Gerard van Belle.)

01.10.03

The selections for the NASA Research Announcement 01-OSS-03, "Keck Interferometer Commissioning Science Team", have now been made. The selected proposals are as follows: John Monnier (PI), "Resolving young stellar objects on sub-AU scales: the inner accretion disks of T Tauri and Herbig Ae/Be stars"; Wes Traub (PI), "Circumstellar disk detection with the Keck nuller"; Shri Kulkarni (PI), "Stellar astronomy with the Keck Interferometer"; and Bill Danchi (PI), "Multi-wavelength visibility observations of circumstellar material with the Keck Interferometer".

01.10.01

The Interferometry Science Center has advertised Two Postdocs Scholar Positions with application deadline of 1 January 2002 and starting date of July 2002.

01.09.28

NEVEC has a job opening for a postdoc as an Interferometric Astronomer with application deadline of 1 January 2002. See also the October 2001 AAS Job Register: Posting 12204.

01.09.28

Photographs of experiments in integrated optics, taken at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, 28 August 2001, are now available on OLBIN.

01.09.28

Photographs from the 2001 IAU Working Group Meeting on Optical/IR Interferometry, which took place 30-31 August 2001, are now available on OLBIN.

01.09.24

On 20 September 2001 the group at the CHARA Array detected first fringes on the longest baseline of the array (South #1 and East #1). The two telescopes are 330 meters apart, exceeding CHARA's former longest baseline of 30 meters by more than a factor of 10. See the News Release and Group Photo on the OLBIN Forum. (Courtesy of Theo ten Brummelaar). [This item is posted on the OLBIN Forum. If you have trouble accessing the news item and have not yet visited the site, you must click on the "I am not a Spammer" button to proceed. The posting will then appear.]

01.09.24

The First Announcement for the EuroWinter School "Observing with the Very Large Telescope interferometer" has been issued. The school will take place at Les Houches, France, 3-8 February 2002. The application deadline is 30 November 2001. The school is sponsored by ESO, ESA, JMMC, CNRS, and NATO.

01.09.24

The European Southern Observatory currently has three job openings for work related to the VLTI: VLTI System Engineer, VLTI Astronometer. and Optical/Electrical Enginner or Physicist for integrated modelling of the VLTI and DARWIN. The application

01.09.24

On 20 September 2001 the group at the CHARA Array detected first fringes on the longest baseline of the array (South #1 and East #1). The two telescopes are 330 meters apart, exceeding CHARA's former longest baseline of 30 meters by more than a factor of 10. See the News Release and Group Photo on the OLBIN Forum. (Courtesy of Theo ten Brummelaar).

01.09.24

The First Announcement for the EuroWinter School "Observing with the Very Large Telescope interferometer" has been issued. The school will take place at Les Houches, France, 3-8 February 2002. The application deadline is 30 November 2001. The school is sponsored by ESO, ESA, JMMC, CNRS, and NATO.

01.09.24

The European Southern Observatory currently has three job openings for work related to the VLTI: VLTI System Engineer, VLTI Astronometer. and Optical/Electrical Enginner or Physicist for integrated modelling of the VLTI and DARWIN. The application deadlines are soon, either October 1 or 15.

01.09.24

A NEVEC-TNO Workshop is schedule for 11 October 2001 on "Imaging with the VLTI". The Workshop will take place at Leiden Observatory, Netherlands.

01.09.24

The NOVA-ESO VLTI Expertise Centre (NEVEC) has recently revised their Web pages. They now includes details of work underway, as well as ongoing listings of job opportunities in the Netherlands in optical/infrared interferometry.

01.08.21

The webpages of Caltech's Interferometry Science Center include a description of getCal, an observation planning software tool which is available for download. getCal is used both at the Palomar Testbed Interferometer and at the Keck Interferometer.

01.08.13

Shri Kulkarni was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 14 May 2001. The list of New Fellows and Foreign Members is available. A news article in rediff.com from May 14th and a press release from Caltech describe his contributions to science. The Fellowship of the Royal Society includes J.E. Baldwin (1991) and C.H. Townes (1976).

01.08.01

The Space Research Organization Netherlands (SRON) has advertized for a PhD Research Student for Space Interferometry to conduct research in support of ESA's DARWIN mission. Application deadline in 1 September 2001.

01.08.01

Photographs of the LBT taken in June 2001 show the structure with its mirror cells being assembed at the factory of Ansaldo Energia in Milan, Italy. Other more recent photographs show the mirror cells removed and continued progress with construction.

01.08.01

The July 2001 letter to NASA Origins Director Anne Kinney from Alan Dressler, Chair of the Origins Subcommittee, contains an an updated assessment of progress with SIM, TPF, and the Keck Interferometer.

01.08.01

A revised and enlarged edition of Interferometry and Synthesis in Radio Astronomy by A.R. Thompson, J.M. Moran and G.W.Swenson Jr., was published by Wiley in April 2001. This second edition of the text is 158 pages longer than the original and contains much new and updated material. (July 2001 NRAO Newsletter, p. 13.)

01.07.30

The 2002 Michelson Interferometry Summer School will be held at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachussetts, 24-28 June 2002. This school will emphasize the engineering principles of long-baseline stellar interferometry, and will be devoted to the material described in the book of course notes from the 1999 Summer School. [Copies of the course notes in either paper version or CDROM are available free of charge by email request to Debi Fambro at dfambro@huey.jpl.nasa.gov. Please use as the subject heading "1999 Course Notes".]

01.07.30

Damien Segransan defended his PhD. thesis on 5 June 2001 at the Observatoire de Grenoble, France. The thesis, titled The very low mass stars of the solar neighborhood: multiplicity and mass-luminosity relation, included observations of M dwarves in multiple systems with the IOTA interferometer.

01.07.30

Photographs of IOTA, including photos at the time of first light with the third telescope (December 2000) are available at the IOTA web pages.

01.07.30

Observations of Altair by PTI are described in the JPL Press release Star with Midriff Bulge Eyed by Astronomers. See also the animation under the image of Altair on the press release. (Courtesy of Gerard van Belle.)

01.07.18

The ESO Messenger for June 2001 (No. 104) contains several articles describing the success earlier this year at the VLTI, including the headline article Successful first light for the VLT Interferometer by C. Cesarsky, ESO's Director General.

01.07.17

The full text of the NASA NRA 01-OSS-04 Extra Solar Planets Advanced Mission Concepts is now available. The objectives are to conduct concept studies for science missions and technology development in support of TPF. Up to six contracts will be awarded initially with up to $250K USD for the first 6 months, with four contracts possibly at the same level of funding being extended for a second period of six months. Proposals are due in October 2001. The announcement of the successful proposals will be made around March-April of 2002.

01.07.16

GILDAS (Grenoble Image and Line Data Analysis Software) is the standard software package used by IRAM and is being extended by Giles Duvert (LAOG) and Philippe Berio (OCA) to include tools for optical/IR interferometry. This package, called ASPRO, is modelled after after the GILDAS routines ASTRO and is described in french through an animated PowerPoint presentation available on the download web page of the Mariotti Center. Some interesting comments concerning the future of GILDAS and AIPS++ can be found in discussions of the Evolution or Revolution of software for IRAM.

01.07.11

The software suite Sim VLTI is available for download from the MIDI group at the Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie. Sim VLTI is an IDL-based tool for simulating observations with MIDI and AMBER. In runs on Linux, Solaris, and MacOS platforms with IDL versions 5.1 and later.

01.07.09

Recent photos (Photos 1 and Photos 2) taken inside the beam combining building of the CHARA Array are available courtesy of Peter Lawson. [Please note that some photos are close to 800 kB in size.] The photos show detail of the infrared and optical tables, include numerous stereo pairs, and also show the newly recoated mirrors of Michelson's 20ft interferometer.

01.07.03

The Web Pages of the Mariotti Center are now available (Courtesy of Alain Chelli). The Mariotti Center aims to coordinate french efforts in high angular resolution astronomy through the development of software and resources for interferometry and the further training of french astronomers. The Center is supported by the Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique (CNRS) through the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers (INSU). The Mariotti Center is especially interested in international collaborations in the support of its goals.

01.07.03

Tom Pauls has released a preliminary FITS data format (PDF) for calibrated synthesis imaging data. The format is principally the result of a collaboration between NPOI and COAST, but also includes changes made as a result of suggestions from representatives of CHARA, IOTA, SUSI, the VLTI, and NRAO. The format is subject to revision based on the input that Tom receives. Please address comments directly to Tom at pauls@nrl.navy.mil.

01.07.03

The list of current Michelson Fellows is available courtesy of Rolf Danner.

01.06.29

Photos by David Buscher from the 2001 Michelson Interferometry Summer School are also available on OLBIN.

01.06.28

Photos by Vincent Coude du Foresto from the 2001 Michelson Interferometry Summer School are now available on OLBIN.

01.06.26

As described in the June 22, 2001 edition (PDF) of the Universe, ground has been broken for the construction of the new interferometry building at JPL. The building is to host new labs and is to be completed in July 2002.

01.06.26

The U.S. Naval Observatory has one or two 2-year, term (postdoctoral) positions available working with the group developing the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer (NPOI). U.S. citizenship is not required. These positions will be at USNO in Washington, DC or at the NPOI site in Flagstaff, AZ, depending on the area of effort. If interested, please contact Dr. Ken Johnston at 202-762-1513. These positions will be available until filled.

01.06.19

Photographs of the Keck Observatory taken 9 May 2001 are available courtesy of Peter Lawson. Photos of interest include views from the top of Keck I looking across to Keck II and down to the siderostats of the Keck Interferometer.

01.06.19

NASA's Office of Space Science is releasing a NASA Research Announcement (NRA 01-OSS-04), entitled Extra-Solar Planets Advanced Mission Concepts to develop any one of three types of investigation concept studies. The Future Solicitations page of the Office of Space Science lists the release date as 16 July 2001. Response to the NRA in the form of a notice of intent is due 17 August 2001, with final proposals due 12 October 2001.

01.06.19

The Astrophysics Group at the University of Cambridge has a job opening for a Research Associate. The position is for work related to the development of new instrumentation for COAST, for future telescope arrays, and to support the existing instrumentation for the on-going astronomy programme. The application deadline is 28 July 2001. (Courtesy of Chris Haniff.) [Dr. John Rogers, who has filled this position since 1987, has now begun work with a startup company south of Cambridge.]

01.06.15

The OLBIN Phone Book Listing has been converted to a format readable by a Palm-compatible PDA. This first version is available as a 65 kB file in tab delimited format and can also be read into spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel. This version has not been tested extensively. If you are interested in using it, please email the editor at lawsonhuey.jpl.nasa.gov, who will gladly supply you with a copy.

01.06.13

Claude and Francois Roddier have taken their retirement from faculty positions at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, as of 29 December 2000. Prior to his retirement, Francois Roddier received the Regents' Medal for Excellence in Research from the University of Hawaii, 7 September 2000.

01.06.11

For those who missed the France Inter report on the VLT and VLTI (10 June 2001), the RealAudio of the complete radio program can be found at the site of Un téléscope pour le XXIe siècle, les débuts de l'astronomie industrielle. Click on "Ecouter a la carte" and advance two minutes. The interview with Pierre Kervella begins 18 minutes from the start, with further discussion of interferometry and planets 41 minutes into the program. The RealAudio should continue to be available in the archives of "interception". (Courtesy of Fabien Malbet).

01.06.08

The Final Announcement for the 36th Liege Astrophysical Colloquium, From Optical to Millimetric Interferometry, has been released. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 10 June 2001.

01.06.06

Wes Traub will chair the next SPIE interferometry meeting, scheduled to be held in the week of 22-28 August 2002 at the Waikoloa Hilton on the Big Island of Hawaii.

01.05.31

A preliminary schedule for the Optical Interferometry oral session at the 198th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society is available courtesy of Andy Boden.

01.05.30

Selected photos from the 2001 Michelson Summer School, courtesy of Peter Lawson.

01.05.30

As described in the 23 May 2001 SIM Newsletter, the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) has received approval from NASA Headquarters to proceed with the shared-baseline interferometer design. As indicated in the External Review Board Report (PDF), picometer technology (MAM-1 testbed) must yet be demonstrated before late 2002.

01.05.18

Professor John Baldwin has been awarded the Jackson Gwilt Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society for new technology development in astronomy. John Baldwin's group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, was the first to measure closure phase with an optical telescope, the first to measure closure phase with separated telescopes, and the first to produce an optical synthesis image with a long-baseline array (the COAST interferometer).

01.05.02

The status of the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) following the NASA External Review Board meeting of 22-23 March, 2001, is described by Steve Unwin in the April 2001 SIM Newsletter.

01.05.02

The Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique (CNRS, France) will issue a press release 3 May 2001 to coincide with the departure of NAOS from the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon for the VLT site at Paranal, Chile. NAOS (Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System) is the first adaptive optics system to be delivered to the VLT. It will be installed on Yepun (Unit Telescope 4) and is designed to work from 1-5 microns with CONICA for high resolution infrared imaging, low-resolution spectroscopy, and moderate-precision polarimetry. Adaptive Optics for the VLTI interferometer is a separate program of development known as MACAO and is based on curvature sensing. The first MACAO-VLTI unit is to be delivered to Paranal in 2002 and the final unit in early 2004. For more information on adaptive optics at ESO, see the ESO Adaptive Optics Team Homepage. See Instruments for the ESO Very Large Telescope for a good general overview of new instruments and commissioning dates.

01.05.01

A new CCD development reported by Craig Mackay et al. in Proc. SPIE 4306 describes Sub-electron read noise at MHz pixel rates for CCD detectors. The paper is available in an HTML version.

01.04.25

The NASA Research Announcement (NRA 01-OSS-03) soliciting proposals for Keck Interferometer Commissioning Team Science has been released. Notices of intent are due May 14 with proposals due June 29, 2001.

01.04.17

Michael Hrynevych, whose work has included involvement with SUSI, the GI2T, LIGO, and the CHARA Array, has recently accepted the post of Interferometer Optics Engineer at the W.M. Keck Observatory.

01.04.13

The program of the 36th Liège International Astrophysical Colloquium From Optical to Millimetric Interferometry (July 2-5, 2001) is now available. Deadline for registration and abstracts is June 1, 2001.

01.04.13

The current status of the DARWIN mission is described in the February 2001 ESA Bulletin. See the articles by L. Gauthier et al. and B.G. Taylor et al.

01.03.27

The Forum HRA will be moving to a new server. Those of you already subscribed are requested to resubscribe by email to sympa@listes.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr with the words "sub forumhra" either as the subject or in the body of the text. The Forum HRA is a French email exploder and discussion group devoted to High Angular Resolution (HRA) astronomy and moderated by Fabien Malbet. See the archive of previous discussions and Fabien's instructions to resubscribe (in french).

01.03.26

Gene Serabyn's nifty new nuller and related nuller designs are described in the Applied Optics preprint Fully symmetric nulling beam combiners (87kB PDF) by Eugene Serabyn and Mark Colavita.

01.03.23

Further details of the AAS Special Topical Session on Optical Interferometry are available courtesy of Andy Boden.

01.03.23

For a very good selection of recent VLTI photographs, see the index entry of thumbnails 011231 at the VLTI Photos library. These include photographs from the recent first-fringes observing run as well as photographs of the siderostats and other views around the site at Paranal.

01.03.21

The News page of the Keck Observatory now includes the item First Fringes for the Keck Interferometer describing in further detail the acquisition of fringes with the two 10-m Keck telescopes. More information and selected photographs are also available at the Keck Interferometer Website. See in particular the First Fringes Images and the First Fringe Technical Details.

01.03.20

Calibrated visibility data from the first observation with the VLTI siderostats is available courtesy of Vincent Coude du Foresto. The data are shown here on a separate web page and also in the original PDF file.

01.03.19

First fringes with the siderostats at the VLTI were achieved on Thursday, March 15, 2001. The first calibrated fringes on a known star (the standard set by ESO for "first fringes") were obtained March 17, 2001. See the Press Release at the European Southern Observatory Web Site. The press release includes photographs, videos, and numerous new views of the interferometer site. Fringes with two 8.2-m telescopes are expected in late 2001.

01.03.16

Theo ten Brummelaar has been appointed Associate Director of the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA).

01.03.16

The SPIE 2002 meeting on Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation will be held 22-28 August 2002 at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island of Hawaii (see Map). More information will be available in due course on the SPIE Meetings Page.

01.03.16

First fringes on the Keck Interferometer using the two 10-m telescopes were achieved Monday, March 12, 2001 at 10:30 pm through efforts by the JPL/CARA team. Baseline of 85 m, with adaptive optics running on both telescopes. The fringe detector was observing at K band and the angle tracker at H. Also see the JPL News Release and the Seeing Double from astronomy.com (Courtesy of Mark Colavita and Gerard van Belle.)

01.03.02

The web-based Proceedings of the 2000 Michelson Interferometry Summer School are now available (Courtesy of Rolf Danner).

01.02.28

The agenda for the 2001 Michelson Interferometry Summer School is now available. The final announcement will be on March 2. The final application deadline is March 9, 2001.

01.02.23

First fringes with the Keck Interferometer were achieved at 1:10am HST 22 February 2001 on delta Vir (HD 112300, V=3.4, K=-1.3), using the 50cm test siderostats. (Courtesy of Gerard van Belle.)

01.02.20

Photographs showing the CHARA Array under the snow are available courtesy of Theo ten Brummelaar.

01.02.20

Scientific American has published the article A Sharper View of the Stars by Arsen Hajian and Tom Armstrong, in the March 2001 issue.

01.02.16

The OLBIN Photos Page has been reorganized to assemble photos taken in the past three years. You will now find there detailed photographs of the CHARA Array, PTI, the GI2T, SOIR D'ETE, plus photographs from past Michelson Summer Schools and the Dana Point Conference.

01.02.16

Dramatic new images obtained from masking the Keck Telescope show a ring of dust and gas swirling around the newly-formed star LkHa 101. Paper by Tuthill, Monnier and Danchi to appear in the February 22, 2001 issue of Nature. For more information see the web page Young Star Cought Eating a Doughnut. (Courtesy of Peter Tuthill).

01.02.15

The 36th Liege International Astrophysical Colloquium is titled "From Optical to Millimetric Interferometry: the Scientific and Technical Challenges" and will be held July 2-5, 2001 in Liege, Belgium. See the First Announcement.

01.02.13

As a follow up to their preliminary architecture studies for TPF, Lockheed-Martin and Boeing-SVS will be studying an infrared or mid-infrared interferometer design, and TRW and Ball Aerospace will be studying an optical coronagraph design. (The study by Boeing-SVS into apodized square apertures is being funded internally by Boeing-SVS).

01.02.13

In October 2000, Rhonda Morgan was one of three finalists to receive an OSA New Focus Student Award of $10,000 at the annual meeting of the Optical Society of America in Providence, Rhode Island. Rhonda is now employed at JPL and is working on the StarLight mission.

01.02.13

The 198th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society will be held in Pasadena, CA, 3-7 June 2001. There will be a day-long session on the subject of Optical Interferometry and a Special Session on Beyond SIRTF/SOFIA/Herschel which includes discussions of future Far-IR space interferometry.

01.02.13

Apodized Square Apertures are being studied by Boeing-SVS for planet detection.

01.01.30

The First Announcement for the 2001 Michelson Interferometry Summer School has been issued. The Summer School will be held in the week of 21-25 May 2001 on the Campus of Lowell Observatory. It will emphasize aspects of data reduction by example, with contributions from NPOI, FLUOR, PTI, and aperture masking the Keck telescopes. The application deadline is March 9, 2001.

01.01.30

The European Space Agency (ESA) offers Postdoctoral Research Fellowships that are available to nationals of ESA member states (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland; Canada is also included as a Cooperating State). More information is available by contacting ESA at maileduc@hq.esa.fr.

01.01.30

Beginning 1 October 2000, and for a duration of 4 years, three research groups located in Paris area have been selected by the European Commission to become a Marie Curie Training Site. These are the Département de recherche spatiale at Observatoire de Paris (DESPA), the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS) at Université Paris 11, and the Département d'Optique Théorique et Appliquée (DOTA) at ONERA. They will accept young researchers during the course of their PhD preparation for a period of 6 to 12 months, in order for these PhD students to carry their activity in one of the groups on subjects related to Astronomical optical interferometry and related science. Travel and local expenses of the PhD students are covered by the Program, as well as a contribution to the research carried during the stay. In the program a total of 96 months of stays is available for the period October 2000-September 2004. Applicants must be 35 years old or less, be a national of an European Union member state or Associated State, and must not undertake the Fellowship in the country of their nationality or recent center of activity (exceptions to the Requirements are possible in certain cases). For more information see the Announcement at the DESPA Web Site.

01.01.29

Photographs of the I2T, GI2T, and SOIR interferometers at the Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur are available. These include close-up photographs of the instrumentation in REGAIN, the new beam combiner of the GI2T. Included are several panoramas and numerous stereo pairs. [The stereo pairs may be viewed by selecting suitable pairs of nearly identical photos, reducing their size and arranging them side-by-side. Cross-eyed viewing works well in the cases I've tried.] See Photos 1, Photos 2, Photos 3, Photos 4, and Photos 5 (the 5th set contains photographs of SOIR and the old optical table of the GI2T.)

01.01.17

OLBIN is moving to a new address, http://olbin.jpl.nasa.gov/ Please now update your links. The move is substantially complete, but there will likely be some inconveniences. Please email lawsonhuey.jpl.nasa. gov if you spot anything I've missed. The news will continue at that site. Web access to huey will be discontinued in the near future.

01.01.17

The web-based Proceedings of the Leiden Interferometry Summer School (18-22 September 2000) containing viewgraphs from the Summer School, are now available courtesy of Isabelle Percheron.

01.01.16

Quicktime movies of simulated Hyper-telescopes are available courtesy of Mike Kaplan (Boeing-SVS). The movies include simulations of Antoine Labeyrie's free-flying array (18 MB) and Francois Roddier's rotational array (17 MB). A Quicktime player is required to view the movies.

01.01.13

The Proceedings of the NSF-sponsored workshop on Imaging with Ground-Based Interferometers (PDF 169kB), held in Socorro last June, is now available courtesy of Hal McAlister.

01.01.04

You can now Search OLBIN to rapidly find items of interest in these pages (courtesy of Melanie Swain).

01.01.03

The CDROM Origins Interferometry, containing PDF versions of the TPF Book (JPL Pub. 99-3), the SIM Book (JPL Pub. 400-811), and Principles of Long Baseline Stellar Interferometry (JPL Pub. 00-009) is now available. To obtain a free copy please email Debi Fambro at JPL, dfambro@olbin.jpl.nasa.gov, including as subject "CDROM Request" and your name and address in the body of the message. Copies will also be available for distribution at the AAS Meeting in San Diego, January 7-11, 2001.

00.12.28

The Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomie is advertising the availability of three postdoctoral positions with work related to infrared interferometry, including long-baseline interferometry with the GI2T, IOTA, and the VLTI. See Position No 11767 in the January 2001 AAS Job Register, and details at the MPIfR Web Site. Deadline for submissions is 1 February 2001. For more information contact Gerd Weigelt at weigelt@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de.

00.12.21

VINCI is being disassembled in preparation for shipment to Paranal. Photographs of the preparations are available at the VINCI web site courtesy of Pierre Kervella. VINCI is a copy of FLUOR and will be the commissioning beam-combiner for the VLTI.

00.12.18

A long-overdue Editorial, December 18, 2000, summarises ongoing work on OLBIN and plans for the Michelson Summer Schools.

00.12.15

ST-3, previously known as DS-3, has recently been renamed StarLight. StarLight is a two element free-flying space interferometer being developed by NASA as a technology precusor for the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission. StarLight is scheduled for launch in 2005.

00.12.06

The group at NPOI have recently completed the installation of telescopes 5 and 6 in preparation for 6-way beam combination. More details may be found through the NPOI Web Pages.

00.12.01

Andreas Quirrenbach (UC San Diego) has been invited by Annual Reviews to write the review paper Optical Interferometry for Ann. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 39 (2001), which will cover advances in the field since the review by M. Shao and M.M. Colavita [Ann. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 30, 457-498 (1992)].

WMKO Telescope Schedules: Interferometer time

• 2001 November 3-5
• 2001 November 22-24
• 2002 January 27-31

• UT1 and UT3: 2001 November 28 (6 nights).
• UT2 and UT4: 2002 March 22 (9 nights).

News 2000 archive.
News 1999 archive.
News 1998 archive.