[X] My Assistant

[OWW]

http://www.keckobservatory.org/news/scienc..._lgs/index.html

Ground-based telescopes are really catching up! Amazing to see that the Keck-image shows more detail than the Hubble picture.

Hubble:


Keck:

[deglr6328]

When can we finally expect to see an AO AND aperture synthesis image from Keck or VLT? I know they're using the interferometers on both of those telescopes but only in the, I don't know what you'd call it, "metrology mode" i guess? where they only use it to get values of star diameters and the like, but never to get any actual images.

[Toma B]

... but never to get any actual images.

That's what I want to know for sure...
So is it possible to get IMAGES from ground (or space) interferometricaly connected telescopes...I don't think about computer simulations based on the data taken through interferometer, I mean REAL IMAGES like this:

[jamescanvin]

That's what I want to know for sure...
So is it possible to get IMAGES from ground (or space) interferometricaly connected telescopes...I don't think about computer simulations based on the data taken through interferometer, I mean REAL IMAGES like this:

That depends on what you mean by "computer simulations based on the data" as interferometers don't 'take' images any image prooduced is in some sense a simulation of the sky intensity based on the data.

I don't know a lot about optical interferometry (I'm a radio astronomer) but I wouldn't expect to see much in the way of pictures from optical interferometers for a long time yet. Even with the big VLT scopes the magnitude limit is pretty poor as your dividing the light up into incredibly small angular scales, so it works best on stars (which is good in a way because stars *are* small!). It's also hard to image large scale emission (like the pretty bits in your attached image) due to the lack of short spacings between telescopes (I'm not sure if the VLT's can even use the single aperture size to help address this in iterferormetric mode) Not to mention the extremly low surface brightness of this emission.


James.