OLBIN - News 2008

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Optical Long Baseline Interferometry News

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

I will gladly accept news contributions and will post new items as I become aware of them. I would be interested in soliciting news items that cover topics of current interest. Suggestions are welcome.

08.05.07: New Scientist has an article on electromagnetic formation flying concepts with videos. The baseline concept for a TPF array still uses traditional thrusters, because fuel consumption doesn't appear to be a problem.
08.04.30: The European Space Agency has announced the creation of its ExoPlanet Roadmap Advisory Team to report in Summer 2009.
08.04.30: The Palomar Testbed Interferometer will cease science operations and be dismantled in December 2008.
08.04.30: The Terrestrial Planet Finder Project will cease being funded as a project by NASA in September 2008, but will continue a subset of its technology activities through NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program.
08.04.30: David Hyland of Texas A&M University has an intensity interferometry project in development. For details see the Intensity Correlation Array website.
08.04.11: Peter Tuthill's WR 104 Webpage shows 6 years of animated data of this bright Wolf Rayet star.
08.04.11: The Space Interferomety Mission has selected four teams to participate in a blind astrometric data reduction analysis.
08.04.11: The Large Binocular Telescope achieves first binocular light. See the press release from the University of Arizona.
08.03.21: The Precision Astronomical Visible Observations (PAVO) beam combiner obtained first fringes on 17 March 2008 at the CHARA Array on Mnt. Wilson. Fringes were automatically found and tracked on lam Uma (R=3.4) on the 106-m W1-W2 baseline. An image showing an example 9ms exposure can be found HERE. These are spatially modulated fringes in a pupil-plane, with 16 lenslets dispersing the fringes into ~24 wavelength channels between 620 and 950 nm. (Courtesy of Michael Ireland.)
08.03.03: A workshop entitled SUSI: Past, Present and Future will be held 29 May 2008 at the University of Sydney in honor of Prof. John Davis's 75th birthday.
08.03.03: The article Israeli fibers help NASA locate livable planets in the universe describes Prof. Abraham Katzir's work in developing Silver Halide single-mode mid-IR fibers for TPF.
08.02.29: The Space Interferometry Mission-PlanetQuest (SIM/PQ) project is seeking external teams of scientists to participate in a demonstration of SIM/PQ's astrometric analysis of multiple-planet exoplanet systems. Proposals are due to the MSC by 5PM PST 17 March 2008. Please see the proposal call for details.
08.02.11: The AAAC ExoPlanet Task Force report Worlds Beyond, drafted to advise NASA and the NSF, is now available.
08.01.29: Observations with the disk around MWC 147 are described in a press release by the European Southern Observatory Growing-up of a Star.
08.01.29: Results of the Keck Nuller are described in the press release Nova Phenomenon Explained with Nulling Mode at Keck Observatory. Also see the paper Milliarcsecond N-Band Observations of the Nova RS Ophiuchi: First Science with the Keck Interferometer Nuller by R. K. Barry et al.
08.01.29: The NSF/NOAO report Renewing Small Telescopes for Astronomical Research includes recommendations for the future support of interferometry in the US. The report committee was formed in May, 2007 by Todd Boroson, Interim Director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, at the request of the National Science Foundation Division of Astronomical Sciences.
08.01.29: The Press Release pages of the Magdalena Ridge Observatory illustrate the development of this new facility.
08.01.29: Rachel Akeson is interviewed in the PlanetQuest story Science is in the genes.
08.01.29: The Michelson Postdoc and Graduate Student Fellowships call has been suspended in 2008. The Michelson Science Center hopes to reissue the next call in 2009.
08.01.29: Version 2.0 of the AMBER data reduction software has been released.
08.01.15: News and speculation of SIM's financial future appeared in Nature. See the article in the edition that appeared online 15 January 2008 | Nature 451, 228-229 (2007) (Subscription required.)
07.12.18: NASA has selected three teams of scientists to begin studying disks of dust around nearby stars starting in February 2008, using the Keck Interferometer in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Details in the press release NASA Mega-Telescope Gears Up to Study Cosmos.
07.12.18: The Michelson Science Center is pleased to announce the public release of a new tool (part of the getCal suite) for planning interferometer observations. The new Visibility Modelling Tool (VMT 1.0) computes visibility amplitudes (and approximate Nuller response for the Keck Interferometer) for most operating ground based optical interferometers.
07.11.29: There will be a splinter session at the AAS meeting in Austin on the evening of January 9th starting at 7:15pm in order to discuss the future of ground based O/IR Interferometry. This session will be focussed on how we might best position the field for a positive outcome in the next decadal review. Theo ten Brummelaar will be chairing this session.

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