Two weeks ago, CHARA achieved “first fringe” with a new beam combiner called Silmaril, which will allows observers to target objects about 100 times fainter in the near-infrared with 3-telescopes. The happy team led by Theo ten Brummelaar, Cyprien Lanthermann, and Peter Tuthill (University of Sydney) celebrates in the picture below from the CHARA control room.
Caption: Silmaril commissioning from left to right: Peter Tuthill, Jimmy Wen, Adam, Sashank, Narsi Anugu, Rob Ligon, Theo ten Brummelaar, Gail Schaefer, Olli Majoinen, Cyprien Lanthermann
Last week, another new combiner SPICA (visible- band) was used for the first time simultaneously with MIRC-X (1.6 micron) and MYSTIC (2.2 micron). The angular resolving power depends on the baselines and wavelength, so using all six telescopes over three wavelength bands gives us 45 independent measurements each observation! The team led by Denis Mourard (University of Nice) marks another celebration.
Caption: Simultaneous multi-band fringes with 3 instruments from left to right: Olli Majoinen, Narsi Anugu, Denis Mourard, Cyril Pannetier, Sylvain Rousseau, Julien Dejonghe