Giant Radio Telescope Tackles Black Holes

Cosmiverse ^

[longshadow]

It's a very exciting field, with great opportunities.

Is there any theoretical or practical limitation that prohibits doing VLBI with OPTICAL instruments?

I should think the resolution would be, dare I say it: absolutely "ASTRONOMICAL!"

[longshadow]

Then imagine a visual interferometer system with Earth-moon baseline!! Images of extra-solar planets.

Ah, you beat me to it by 24 minutes!

[edwin hubble]

Visual wavelength interferometry...br> Yes, it can be done...
Synchronizing, aligning, with an Earth-moon baseline will be the challenge
but by the time we are ready to install on the moon, we would have the technology.

Eventually a baseline of Jupiter-orbit size.

[longshadow]

Eventually a baseline of Jupiter-orbit size.

Heck, a continent-wide baseline would produce prodigious results at optical frequencies..... why wait?

[edwin hubble]

Here's a good overview paper on optical interferometry in space, National Academies of Science

Space Science in the Twenty-First Century
Imperatives for the Decades 1995 to 2015
Astronomy and Astrophysics

Nat. Academies overview paper on optical interferometry in space

[longshadow]

Here's a good overview paper on optical interferometry in space, National Academies of Science

Thanks!

[ThinkPlease]

We also just hired an optical interferometer guy for one of our instrumentation positions. He's done some pretty neat stuff, and we're definitely looking forward to his work when he gets here. The problem with getting such high resolution in the optical is that you need a source with relatively high surface brightness that you can both see and resolve the source at the same time. There's another guy out there who does optical interferometry of Wolf-Rayet stars, really young stars that are sloughing off their outer atmospheres due to radiation pressure. He found, using local optical interferometry (at Keck, I think), that several Wolf-Rayet stars have companions, an effect that couldn't have been discovered without interferometry. Really cool stuff. Both interferometry and high mass stars in the same project.

[longshadow]

The problem with getting such high resolution in the optical is that you need a source with relatively high surface brightness that you can both see and resolve the source at the same time.

Ah, so extended faint phenomona are not good targets for OI.

Bummer.