Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Sky and Telescope article on CHARA

Tony Flanders writes about Georgia State's observatory on historic Mt. Wilson in Sky and Telescope.


Almost 80 years after Michelson's experiment, Georgia State University's Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) arrray became operational atop Mount Wilson. It consists of six one-meter telescopes scattered across the mountaintop. The light from the separate telescopes is brought to an optical laboratory where it is mixed together with exceeding precision and care.

The CHARA array claims a resolution of 200 microarcseconds, 250 times better than the Hubble's theoretical limit of 50 milliarcseconds.