Aperture Synthesis with Light

The astronomer's desire to see things in ever greater detail is thwarted at optical wavelengths by the earth's atmosphere: making optical telescopes larger does not provide more detail in the images. Using lessons learnt from radio astronomy we are combining light from 4 small separated telescopes, three of which are shown below, to overcome the atmospheric problems and synthesise pictures with a thousand times finer detail than is visible with existing telescopes. The Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telescope (COAST) is being developed to meet the very demanding task of imaging the surfaces of individual stars and studying the interaction of close pairs of stars.

To continue the tour of Lord's Bridge, click here. For more information, follow the links below.

The MRAO
An Introduction to Radio Telescopes
Stars - Birth and Death
Galaxies and Quasars
Cosmology

Last Modified 13 October 1998
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