As a part of regular operations, the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) uses Narrow Angle Trackers (NAT) for atmospheric tip-tilt correction. This correction is done using a quad cell array for each station, and is based on the error signals measured by these arrays. The relationship between error signals and atmospheric seeing error is analyzed in detail, including modeling of quad cell behavior and optical modeling of propagation of seeing errors from receiving siderostats to quad cell displacements in the laboratory. This investigation updates a previous investigation1 and demonstrates direct mapping of atmospheric seeing to jitter error measurements. Limitations of this technique and future improvements are also discussed.
The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) has been in operation since 1996 and has built a significant data archive of interferometric observations over a range of visible wavelengths. Here we present a catalog of ~600 objects with NPOI data including the year(s) of observation(s) and how many scans were obtained for each target, as well as statistics on the targets' properties. The sample includes a wide range of single stars and binary systems, some of which has been published previously. Our intent in this paper is to let the community know exactly when we observed a given target, and how many observations were obtained each year. We welcome collaboration with researchers interested in discovering if NPOI data can help their programs.
Aperture masking is a technique to transform a filled-aperture telescope into an interferometer. One reason masks help boost sensitivity is that they facilitate the measurement of closure phases. Closure phases are insensitive to differential piston in the wavefront of light captured by each subaperture, so are a precise observable encoding the structure of the observed object. Spatial structure in the wavefront of light over each subaperture biases visibilities and closure phases. All extant aperture masking data sets show residual closure phase dispersion after calibration larger than estimates based on photon-noise alone, suggesting time variable substructure in the wavefront is playing a role in limiting closure phase precision. We are developing a technique harnessing the capabilities of holographic aperture masks to multiplex subapertures to provide for simultaneous focal-plane wavefront sensing of each subaperture. This device can be used to measure the spatial structure of the wavefront, facilitating self-calibrating closure phases. We will present the results of simulations demonstrating the concept and describe a prototype instrument design.
We will present the status of the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer. We will discuss upgrades that occurred over the course of the last couple of years, their related scientific achievements, ongoing and future work. We will discuss the improvements done to the infrastructure of the site, the return to observations with 6 telescopes simultaneously and the results of these observations. We will discuss the deployment of new capabilities, such as an infrared beam combiner, siderostat controllers and a new angle tracker. We will also present the deployment of the Amon Hen hypertelescope experiment and changes done to the inner room in order to accommodate the use of both systems without the need of large rearrangements of the optics.
The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) has been in operation since 1996, building a substantial data archive. This provided the opportunity to determine how many data points are needed for a single star’s angular diameter fit to become stable as more data points were included. In an iterative process, we calculated the diameters for an ever-increasing number of data points for 31 stars. We found that at approximately 1,000 data points, the scatter in the diameter fits fell below 2%. Assuming a 3-telescope triangle and using 15 channels across a range of wavelengths, 1,000 data points equates to 22 to 25 bracketed observations, which can usually be accomplished in 2 to 4 nights. This will be a useful rule-of-thumb when planning observations and gathering data on single, symmetrical stars.
We have been progressing on our comprehensive program of improving high-resolution imaging at the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) hosted at Lowell Observatory’s Anderson Mesa site, for the purpose of spatially resolved observations of faint objects at scales down to less than 1 milliarcsecond. The ‘PALANTIR’ upgrade of NPOI has commenced with individually operating 1 meter PlaneWave PW1000 telescopes at the site, with integration of those telescopes into the array with interferometric operations expected in the near-term. These telescopes are housed in mobile domes for rapid relocation around the array, and are being augmented with adaptive optics. Another notable recent milestone has been the re-activation of full six-way on-sky operations with siderostat feeds during the summer of 2021. Additionally, our ‘NPOI Plus-Up’ plan will implement sweeping infrastructure updates, improving and streamlining its operations. Upcoming Plus-Up work taking place over the next few years includes expansion of the operating infrastructure to the array’s longest physical baselines at 432 meters, adding a near-infrared beam combiner, rehabilitation of the VISION visible combiner, modernization of the fast delay line control system, and implementation of the long delay lines in the framework of a beam train auto-aligner.
We have been pursuing a comprehensive program of improving high-resolution imaging at the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) hosted at Lowell Observatory’s Anderson Mesa site, for the purpose of spatially resolved observations of faint objects at scales down to less than 1 milliarcsecond. This activity at NPOI is being implemented with two primary phases. First, the ‘PALANTIR’ upgrade of NPOI is augmenting the existing telescope array with three 1-meter PlaneWave PW1000 telescopes. These telescopes are housed in mobile domes for rapid relocation around the array, and are being augmented with adaptive optics. Second, we are implementing a ‘NPOI Plus-Up’ plan which is modernizing the array infrastructure and streamlining its operations. All of these activities are being carried out as our current operations are continuing.
Detecting exoplanets and characterizing their orbital properties is a difficult task, given the proximity of these objects relative to their host stars, as well as their brightness ratios. We present an interferometric fringe nulling technique, aimed at solving these issues. This technique uses baseline phases and takes advantage of the strong phase fluctuations, due to the presence of an exoplanet, that can be observed at spatial frequencies adjacent to the null crossing. We present initial results based on observations of the multiple stellar system η Aql, obtained with the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer, which indicate the presence of a Δm~5 mag close to the brightest star in this system.
The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) is currently undergoing a fundamental renaissance in its functionality and capabilities. Operationally, its fast delay line (FDL) infrastructure is completing its upgrade from a VME/VxWorks foundation to a modern PC/RTLinux core. The Classic beam combiner is being upgraded with the New Classic FPGA-based backend, and the VISION beam combiner has been upgraded over this past summer with low-noise EMCCD cameras, resulting in substantial gains in sensitivity. Building on those infrastructure improvements, substantial upgrades are also in progress. Three 1-meter PlaneWave CDK1000 telescopes are being delivered to the site, along with their relocatable enclosure-transporters, and stations are being commissioned for those telescopes with baselines ranging from 8 meters to 432 meters. Baseline-wavelength bootstrapping will be implemented on the facility back-end with a near-infrared beam combiner under development. Collectively, these improvements mark substantial progress in taking the facility towards realizing its full intrinsic potential.
Since 1994, the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) has operated at visual wavelengths (450 to 850 nm). Its primary Classic backend is a pupil-plane combiner that disperses the light at a resolution R ≈ 50, uses avalanche photo-diodes as photon-counting detectors, and scans interference fringes by modulating the delay at 1 kHz. The newer NPOI image-plane combiner, VISION (Tennessee State University), which is similar to CHARA’s MIRC and is currently being upgraded, dispenses with delay modulation. We are now developing a third backend to expand into the near infrared. Its primary purpose will be to stabilize the NPOI for high-resolution observations by bootstrapping from the infrared to visual wavelengths.
We recently used archival and newly obtained data from the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer to measure the fundamental properties of 87 stars. The sample consisted of 5 dwarfs, 3 subgiants, 69 giants, 3 bright giants, and 7 supergiants, and spanned a wide range of spectral classes from B to M. We combined our angular diameters with photometric and distance information from the literature to determine each star’s physical radius, effective temperature, bolometric flux, luminosity, mass, and age. Several dozen of the stars have visibility curves sampled down to the first null, where the visibilities drop to zero. Here we present preliminary results showing limb-darkening fits for the five zero crossing stars that have the best coverage of the second lobe.
One of the main problems faced by the Space Situational Awareness community is the detection and characterization of faint objects around geosats. Independent of the origin of these objects, whether they are debris or controlled spacecraft, they can potentially harm these assets and contaminate the geobelt environment. The challenge of detecting these companion objects comes from their proximity and brightness ratio relative to geosats. Here we present a novel interferometric fringe nulling technique, aimed at solving these issues. This technique takes advantage of the fact that the presence of companions introduces large phase fluctuations in the fringe phase observed by an interferometer, when the interferometer is observing a target at spatial frequencies where the fringe amplitude is near zero. We describe the ongoing development of this technique at the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer, and the results of simulations of interferometric observations of satellites with companions. We also present the current state of the NPOI and related SSA work being done with this interferometer, as well as undergoing upgrades to the system.
We describe the current status of the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI), including developments since the last SPIE meeting. The NPOI group has added stations as far as 250m from the array center and added numerous infrastructure improvements. Science programs include stellar diameters and limb darkening, binary orbits, Be star disks, exoplanet host stars, and progress toward high-resolution stellar surface imaging. Technical and infrastructure projects include on-sky demonstrations of baseline bootstrapping with six array elements and of the VISION beam combiner, control system updates, integration of the long delay lines, and updated firmware for the Classic beam combiner. Our plans to add up to four 1.8 m telescopes are no longer viable, but we have recently acquired separate funding for adding three 1 m AO-equipped telescopes and an infrared beam combiner to the array.
The New Classic instrument was built as a electronics and computer upgrade to the existing Classic beam combiner at the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI). The classic beam combiner is able to record 32 of 96 available channels and has a data throughput limitation which results in a low duty cycle. Additionally the computing power of the Classic system limited the amount of fringe tracking that was possible. The New Classic system implements a high-throughput data acquisition system which is capable of recording all 96 channels continuously. It also has a modern high-speed computer for data management and data processing. The computer is sufficiently powerful to implement more sophisticated fringe-tracking algorithms than the Classic system, including multi-baseline bootstrapping. In this paper we described the New Classic hardware and software, including the fringe-tracking algorithm, performance, and the user interface. We also show some initial results from the first 5-station, 4-baseline bootstrapping carried out in January 2015.
Imaging with optical interferometers requires fringe measurements on baseline long enough to resolve the target. These long baselines typically have low fringe contrast. Phasing them requires fringe tracking on shorter baselines which typically have greater fringe contrast and combining the fringe-tracking signals on the short baselines to phase the long baselines in a baseline bootstrapping configuration. On long resolving baselines coherent integration also becomes necessary in order to shorten the integration time. This paper addresses both the baseline bootstrapping and the coherent integration. The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) is laid out in a way which permits long-baseline phasing from shorter baselines in a multi-baseline scheme. The New Classic instrument for NPOI was designed specifically to implement the multi-baseline bootstrapping capability and multi-baseline observations can now be carried out routinely at the NPOI. This paper provides details about the bootstrapping scheme at NPOI and shows some initial results. We also discuss the bootstrapping error budget, describe our new Bayesian coherent integration algorithm and compare its performance to theory.
We plan to measure the angular diameters of a sample of Penn State-Torun Planet Search (PTPS) giant exoplanet host star candidates using the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer. The radii of evolved giant stars obtained using spectroscopy are usually ill-defined because of the method’s indirect nature and evolutionary model dependency. The star’s radius is a critical parameter used to calculate luminosity and mass, which are often not well known for giant stars. Therefore, this problem also affects the orbital period, mass, and surface temperature of the planet. Our interferometric observations will significantly decrease the errors for these parameters. We present preliminary results from NPOI observations of six stars in the PTPS sample.
We describe multi-baseline observations of a geostationary satellite using the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) during the glint season of March 2015. We succeeded in detecting DirecTV-7S with an interferometer baseline length of 8.8 m on two nights, with a brief simultaneous detection at 9.8 m baseline length on the second night. These baseline lengths correspond to a resolution of ~4 m at geostationary altitude. This is the first multiple-baseline interferometric detection of a satellite.
We describe multi-baseline observations of a geostationary satellite using the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) during the glint season of March 2015. We succeeded in detecting DirecTV-7S with an interferometer baseline length of 8.8 m on two nights, with a brief simultaneous detection at 9.8 m baseline length on the second night. These baseline lengths correspond to a resolution of ~4 m at geostationary altitude.
This is the first multiple-baseline interferometric detection of a satellite.
The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer is an astronomical optical interferometer operating near Flagstaff, Arizona. A
joint program between the United States Naval Observatory, the Naval Research Laboratory and Lowell Observatory, it
has historically been involved in space imagery and astrometry. More recent work has pushed for the addition of more
baselines. It is currently capable of co-phasing 6 elements, so the commissioning of additional baselines requires ease of
use and reconfigurability. At the time of this publication, a seventh station has been added and the final commissioning
work on an eighth and ninth station are being completed. These last two stations will increase the longest baseline to 435
meters. This paper discusses the work to date on adding these stations and provides details on increased capabilities.
The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) has a station layout which makes it uniquely suited for imaging. Stellar surface imaging requires a variety of baseline lengths and in particular long baselines with resolution much smaller than the diameter of the target star. Because the fringe signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is generally low on such long baselines, fringe-tracking cannot be carried out on those baselines directly. Instead, baseline bootstrapping must be employed in which the long baseline is composed of a number of connected shorter baselines. When fringes are tracked on all the shorter baselines fringes are also present on the long baseline. For compact sources, such as stellar disks, the shorter baselines generally have higher SNR and making them short enough that the source is unresolved by them is ideal. Thus, the resolution, or number of pixels across a stellar disk, is roughly equal to the ratio of the length of the long baseline to the length of the short baselines. The more bootstrapped baselines, the better the images produced. If there is also a wide wavelength coverage, wavelength bootstrapping can also be used under some circumstances to increase the resolution further. The NPOI is unique in that it allows 6-station, 5-baseline bootstrapping, the most of any currently operating interferometer. Furthermore, the NPOI Classic beam combiner has wavelength coverage from 450 nm to 850 nm. However, until now, this capability has not been fully exploited. The stellar surface imaging project which was recently funded by the National Science Foundation is exploiting this capability. The New Classic data acquisition system, reported separately, is the hardware which delivers the data to the fringe-tracking algorithm. In this paper we report on the development of the fringe-tracking capability with the New Classic data acquisition system. We discuss the design of the fringe tracking algorithm and present performance results from simulations and on sky observation.
We observed 85 stars using the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer in order to determine their angular diameters. Here we present preliminary uniform disk fits for the stars. Many of the targets have measurements through the first zero crossing and onto the second lobe of the visibility curve. We will use these observations to test limb darkening laws, namely the effectiveness of plane parallel versus spherically symmetric models. These results have important implications for the accuracy with which we can determine the limb darkening of stars used as calibrators on long baselines being implemented in the near future on the NPOI, which will almost certainly have to be at least semi-resolved. The validation or exposure of systematics in the limb darkening laws can also be applied to any number of stars observed interferometrically.
The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) has been recording astronomical observations for nearly two decades, at this point with hundreds of thousands of individual observations recorded to date for a total data volume of many terabytes. To make maximum use of the NPOI data it is necessary to organize them in an easily searchable manner and be able to extract essential diagnostic information from the data to allow users to quickly gauge data quality and suitability for a specific science investigation. This sets the motivation for creating a comprehensive database of observation metadata as well as, at least, reduced data products. The NPOI database is implemented in MySQL using standard database tools and interfaces. The use of standard database tools allows us to focus on top-level database and interface implementation and take advantage of standard features such as backup, remote access, mirroring, and complex queries which would otherwise be time-consuming to implement. A website was created in order to give scientists a user friendly interface for searching the database. It allows the user to select various metadata to search for and also allows them to decide how and what results are displayed. This streamlines the searches, making it easier and quicker for scientists to find the information they are looking for. The website has multiple browser and device support. In this paper we present the design of the NPOI database and website, and give examples of its use.
We present the results of a study done with data from the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI). We use data from the Narrow Angle Trackers to perform a photometric calibration of the visibilities. We describe the method and preliminary results on improvements to the precision of the visibility amplitude calibration.
The New Classic data acquisition system is an important portion of a new project of stellar surface imaging with the NPOI, funded by the National Science Foundation, and enables the data acquisition necessary for the project. The NPOI can simultaneously deliver beams from 6 telescopes to the beam combining facility, and in the Classic beam combiner these are combined 4 at a time on 3 separate spectrographs with all 15 possible baselines observed. The Classic data acquisition system is limited to 16 of 32 wavelength channels on two spectrographs and limited to 30 s integrations followed by a pause to ush data. Classic also has some limitations in its fringe-tracking capability. These factors, and the fact that Classic incorporates 1990s technology which cannot be easily replaced are motivation for upgrading the data acquisition system. The New Classic data acquisition system is based around modern electronics, including a high-end Stratix FPGA, a 200 MB/s Direct Memory Access card, and a fast modern Linux computer. These allow for continuous recording of all 96 channels across three spectrographs, increasing the total amount of data recorded by a an estimated order of magnitude. The additional computing power on the data acquisition system also allows for the implementation of more sophisticated fringe-tracking algorithms which are needed for the Stellar Surface Imaging project. In this paper we describe the New Classic system design and implementation, describe the background and motivation for the system as well as show some initial results from using it.
The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) was designed from the beginning to support baseline boot- strapping with equally-spaced array elements. The motivation was the desire to image the surfaces of resolved stars with the maximum resolution possible with a six-element array. Bootstrapping two baselines together to track fringes on a third baseline has been used at the NPOI for many years, but the capabilities of the fringe tracking software did not permit us to bootstrap three or more baselines together. Recently, both a new backend (VISION; Tennessee State Univ.) and new hardware and firmware (AZ Embedded Systems and New Mexico Tech, respectively) for the current hybrid backend have made multi-baseline bootstrapping possible.
We present progress on the stellar surface imaging project recently funded by the U. S. National Science Foun- dation. With the unique layout of the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) in combination with data acquisition and fringe-tracking upgrades we expect to be able to substantially exceed the imaging fidelity and resolution of any other interferometer in operation. The project combines several existing advances and infras- tructure at NPOI with modest enhancements. For optimal imaging there are several requirements that should be fulfilled. The observatory should be capable of measuring visibilities on a wide range of baseline lengths and orientations, providing complete Fourier (UV) coverage in a short period of time. It should measure visibility amplitudes with good SNR on all baselines as critical imaging information is often contained in low-amplitude visibilities. It should measure the visibility phase on all baselines. The technologies which can achieve this are the NPOI Y-shaped array with (nearly) equal spacing between telescopes and an ability for rapid configuration. Placing 6-telescopes in a row makes it possible to measure visibilities into the 4th lobe of the visibility function. By arranging the 12 available telescopes carefully we can switch, every few days, between 6 different 6-station chains which provide symmetric coverage in the Fourier plane without moving any telescopes, only by moving beam relay mirrors. The 6-station chains are important to achieve the highest imaging resolution, and switching rapidly between station chains provides uniform coverage. Coherent integration techniques can be used to obtain good SNR on very small visibilities. Coherently integrated visibilities can be used for imaging with standard radio imaging packages such as AIPS. The commissioning of one additional station, the use of new data acqui- sition hardware and fringe tracking algorithms are the enhancements which are making this project a reality. The New Classic data acquisition system, based on a powerful Stratix FPGA and fast Direct Memory Access module, upgrades the existing Classic beam combiner to allow for continuous data recording across all baselines available with 6 telescopes. It also provides the computing power and software environment necessary for im- plementing the 6-station, 5-baseline fringe-tracking algorithms. In separate papers we discuss the New Classic data acquisition system and the fringe-tracking algorithms in greater detail. In this paper we will focus on an overview of the project. We will describe the observation planning, logistics of the observations, and discuss the current status of the project including preliminary results and simulations of expected future results.
A Michelson optical interferometer, such as an upgraded version of the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer, could image geosynchronous satellites (geosats) with resolution of roughly 1 m. Baselines that sample features as small as 0.2 m can be built, however, the fringes would be swamped by the resolved component. Recent observations have shown that small glints known as “glintchen,” aside from being a nuisance, serve to isolate and highlight the signal from these structures. Imaging of geosats during glintchen events can determine the dimensions of these structures and can also play a critical role in determining if these glintchen are due to a previously undetected companion satellite. An approach for performing this glint-aided imaging of geosats and the wealth of detail it would yield, is discussed.
Coherent integration is an analysis approach which, can greatly increase the SNR of optical interferometric
visibilities compared to those computed by the traditional squared visibility power spectrum technique. Co-
herent integration relies on phase-referencing, optimally through post-processing fringe-tracking, to effectively
create long coherent integrations of the fringe. At the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) this phase-
referencing is achieved by a combination of wavelength bootstrapping and baseline bootstrapping. The result
is that the complex visibility with full phase information is retrieved and that the poor noise associated with
the power spectrum approach is greatly reduced. For small visibilities, which are most important in resolving
objects, the SNR can be improved sometimes by orders of magnitudes, sometimes making the difference between
easy and practically impossible observations. The fringe-tracking portion of coherent integration is limited by the
SNR of the tracking signal and the noise of that causes some fringe smearing which must be calibrated. In this
paper we develop a theoretical model of the resulting fringe smearing and its correction. We then demonstrated
its validity through simulation and on observations from the NPOI.
We simulate the observations of a red supergiant star and an asteroid with an optical interferometer mounted on
a boom. This instrument has an advantage over more traditional interferometers because it significantly reduces
the number of reflections and surfaces, thus allowing one to combine a larger number of telescopes without a
significant loss of sensitivity. We investigate two telescope arrays distributed on a hexagonal pattern, one that
produces a non redundant coverage of the uv-plane and one that produces a redundant coverage of the uv-plane.
These simulated observations are combined with traditional aperture synthesis techniques to reconstruct images
and determine the accuracy of these images relative to the original ones.
Optical interferometry is the only means of directly measuring the sizes of stars. The most precise angular
diameter measurements, however, depend on measuring complex fringe visibilities V at spatial frequencies where
Re(V ) crosses zero. We can then use the spatial frequency B⊥/λ0 of the zero crossing as a measure of the stellar diameter via θUD,0 ≈ 1.22λ0/B⊥, where λ0 and is the wavelength at which Re(V ) = 0 when observed
with a baseline length B⊥ projected toward the star, and θUD,0 is the equivalent uniform disk diameter. The variation in limb darkening with wavelength leads to a corresponding variation in θUD,0 with λ, even at fixed B,
which allows us to measure the limb darkening in detail and probe the structure of the atmosphere. However, in
order to take meaningful data at those spatial frequencies, we need some form of bootstrapping, in wavelength,
baseline length, or both. Reduction of these bootstrapped data benefits greatly from the increase in SNR offered
by coherent averaging. We demonstrate the effect of limb darkening on θUD,0(λ) with simulated observations based on model atmospheres, and compare them to coherently averaged NOI data.
Optical Interferometry has long been limited by low SNR making it nearly impossible to measure the small
visibilities required to make resolved images. Although the SNR exists in the raw data, much SNR is lost in
the conventional squared-visibility processing. In modern interferometers fringes are recorded simultaneously at
many wavelengths and baselines. This makes phase-referencing possible, which is the key to coherent integration,
which in turns can greatly improve the SNR of measurements, making small-amplitude resolving measurements
possible. In this paper we will detail the theory of coherent integration. We will also explain why coherent
integration should, in most cases, be carried out during post-processing in software rather than in real-time in
hardware. We will then compare it to conventional processing approaches for some data from the Navy Optical
Interferometer. We will demonstrate how coherent integration can improve the accuracy of observations.
The increase in the number of satellites and space debris in low Earth orbit (LEO) makes tracking these objects
and avoiding collisions a major endeavor. A particularly important issue is the determination of the altitude
of these objects, which in many cases is not known with a precision better than 1 km. Here we present the
idea of using simultaneous observations by 2 optical telescopes, separated by a few hundred km, to refine the
altitude measurement of these objects to a precision of 10 m. We discuss the requirements for such a system,
like aperture, timing precision, and the precision to which one needs to know the positions of the telescopes and
background stars.
Even the longest geosatellite, at 40 m, subtends only 0.2 arcsec (1 microradian). Determining structure and
orientation with 10 cm resolution requires a 90 m telescope at visual wavelengths, or an interferometer. We de-
scribe the application of optical interferometry to observations of complex extended targets such as geosatellites,
and discuss some of its challenges. We brie
y describe our Navy Optical Interferometer (NOI) group's eorts
toward interferometric observations of geosatellites, including the rst interferometric detection of a geosatellite.
The NOI observes in 16 spectral channels (550{850 nm) using up to six 12-cm apertures, with baselines (separa-
tions between apertures) of 16 to 79 m. We detected the geosatellite DirecTV-9S during glint seasons in March
2008 and March 2009, using a single 16 m baseline (resolution 1:6 m). Fringes on a longer baseline were too
weak because the large-scale structure was over-resolved. The fringe strengths are consistent with a combination
of two size scales, 1:3 m and & 3:5 m. Our near term NOI work is directed toward observing geosatellites with
three or more 10 to 15 m baselines, using closure phase measurements to remove atmospheric turbulence eects
and coherent data averaging to increase the SNR. Beyond the two- to three-year time frame, we plan to install
larger apertures (1.4 and 1.8 m), allowing observations outside glint season, and to develop baseline bootstrap-
ping, building long baselines from chains of short baselines, to avoid over-resolution while increasing maximum
resolution. Our ultimate goal is to develop the design parameters for dedicated satellite imaging interferometry.
We present the results of Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer observations of the binary stars θ2 Tauri and
HR7955. These data are reduced using standard methods, as well as coherent integration, and were fitted using
three different methods to measure the separation and position angle of the components, and their magnitude
differences. We used the traditional technique of fitting the V2's, triple amplitudes and triple phases, we also
fitted the baseline phases obtained through coherent integration, and measured the separation of the components
directly on images reconstructed using complex visibilities and phase self calibration. We find that fitting baseline
phases produces the highest precision. The results obtained from imaging are similar to these, although with
higher uncertainties, while the traditional method has the lowest precision. We attribute this result to the fact
that the traditional method combines multiple measurements, e.g. triple phases, thus increasing the errors and
reducing the amount of information that can be fitted. We also obtain a preliminary fit to the orbit of HR7955.
In this paper we will discuss the current status of coherent integration with the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer
(NPOI). Coherent integration relies on being able to phase reference interferometric measurements, which in turn relies on making measurements at multiple wavelengths. We first discuss the generalized group-delay approach, then the meaning of the resulting complex visibilities and then demonstrate how coherent integration
can be used to perform very precision measurement of stellar diameters. The phase of the complex visibility is
particularly attractive as a data product because it is not biased in the same way as visibility amplitudes. We
discuss the relative SNR of triple-product phases and single-baseline phases. We then demonstrate how singlebaseline
phases can be used to make accurate measurements of magnitude differences and separations of binary stars.
We present the angular diameters, physical radii, and effective temperatures of five stars observed using both
the Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI) and the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer (NPOI). These preliminary
results are part of a larger project focused on measuring the angular diameters of the 62 stars that have
been observed with both instruments. We plan to achieve diameter accuracies of 0.5% or better through the
combination of infrared- and visible-wavelength data from PTI and the NPOI, respectively. The difference in
limb-darkening effects between the two wavelength regimes, together with other external parameters, will allow
us to test the atmospheric models on which the limb-darkening corrections are based. High quality angular diameters
for these stars will also lead to more accurate physical diameter measurements and effective temperature determinations.
Extrasolar planetary systems are assumed as a sample to exhibit random orbital inclinations. The chance exists that a few of the 152 extrasolar planetary systems known to date may have face-on orbits for which the sin i factor will make a stellar-mass companion mimic a planetary-mass object. Such systems may thus harbor a late spectral type stellar companion instead of planets. Using Georgia State University's CHARA Array, we are undertaking an observing program on accessible extrasolar planetary systems that is expected to be completed in 2007. This effort will assist in culling the exoplanet list of some very low-inclination stellar interlopers that may be present. We will also determine the diameters of the central stars in an effort to refine our knowledge of the evolutionary status of the host stars.
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