CHARA Array Getting Its Seventh Movable Telescope With Increased Resolution to Better See Small Objects

Recently, new equipment and strategies have been introduced for a seventh telescope at Georgia State's CHARA Array (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy), which will give scientists the ability to observe stars with more precision than previously possible.

The enhancements were unveiled following the 2023 CHARA Science Meeting held in Atlanta, where scientists from around the world convened to discuss advancements in high-resolution astronomical imaging utilizing the CHARA Array.

Upgrading the CHARA Array

Located at Mount Wilson Observatory in Southern California, the CHARA Array is having its the seventh telescope connected via fiber optics to transport starlight for which it will serve as a pathfinder for future expansion of the Array, SciTech Daily reported.

Professor Doug Gies said that adding the new telescope represents a great leap forward in solar astronomy and serves as a fundamental collaboration among scientists from different parts of the world.

The CHARA Array uses six optical telescopes spread across a mountaintop to capture high-resolution images of stars, achieving the spatial resolution of a single telescope over 1000 feet in diameter.

The observatory offers better resolution for capturing images of space than any other telescope globally. Over 40 members from 10 institutions worldwide participated in the annual review of the CHARA Consortium's scientific and technical advancements.

Partner institutions, including the University of Michigan, University of Exeter, and Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in France, have developed a new suite of instruments for CHARA that enables the imaging of surfaces of the stars and their circumstellar environments at different wavelengths from near-infrared to visible parts of the spectrum.

Georgia State University is also building a new instrument to enhance the sensitivity of CHARA, allowing astronomers to investigate gas clouds around distant supermassive black holes.

Over the last six years, CHARA's user base has grown through open-access programs funded by the National Science Foundation. This program provides access to global astronomers via a competitive proposal process, and more than 350 visiting astronomers worldwide have applied for it, not to mention the over 60 active observers at Georgia State University and its partner institutions.

CHARA Array's Discoveries

The annual gathering is also a forum for scientists to share their latest discoveries using CHARA Array. A similar report by Science Daily listed some of these discoveries that were presented during the gathering. Here are some of them:

• Katherine Shepard, a graduate student from Georgia State University, used CHARA to investigate evolved massive binary star systems surrounded by outflowing disks, resolving the disks' structure and searching for interactions between the inner binary system and the disk.
• University of Michigan graduate student Noura Ibrahim imaged the ring-like structure of a circumstellar disk around the young star V1295 Aquila while observing a bright spot in the ring that rotates between two epochs. Scientists believe it could be caused by a stellar companion, an exoplanet in formation, or asymmetries in the density distribution.
• Willie Torres, a visiting astronomer, mapped the orbits of the stars in the Castor multiple star system, resolving the close, faint companions in Castor A and B using CHARA for the first time, and measuring their stellar masses with high precision. The radii of the two brightest stars were also measured using CHARA observations, providing an age for the system of 290 million years.
• University of Michigan Postdoctoral Associate Rachael Roettenbacher studied starspots over a rotation cycle for Epsilon Eridani, a sun-like star with an exoplanet orbiting it. She developed a technique to distinguish between small changes in the stellar spectrum caused by starspots and those caused by the orbiting planet, improving planet detection around other stars.

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