Kilometer-baseline Interferometry: Science Drivers For The Next Generation Instrument

Infrared interferometry has seen a revolution over the last few years. The advent of GRAVITY+ is about to enable high-contrast observations, all-sky coverage and faint science up to K=21, with the implementation on 8m-class telescope of extreme adaptive optics, wide-field observations, and soon laser guide stars, following a long-term vision of technological and infrastructure development at VLTI.

This major progress in sensitivity lift a fundamental limitation of infrared interferometry, namely the brightness temperature achievable with this technique down to milli-arcsecond resolution imaging. This change of paradigm is a crucial element for the expansion of current arrays to a facility up to one to ten kilometer baselines.

Micro-arcsecond scales imaging in the infrared on thermal objects, reaching the highest angular resolution possible even compared to VLBI, could offer a unique window in observational astronomy for the next generation instrument.

G. Bourdarot, F. Eisenhauer

Comments: Presented at the SF2A 2024, Marseille (France)
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2410.22063 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2410.22063v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.22063
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Submission history
From: Guillaume Bourdarot
[v1] Tue, 29 Oct 2024 14:21:33 UTC (1,635 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22063

Astrobiology