Recent Developments

2002/06/21The COAST team announces a new partnership with the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Consortium, to design and build a $40M optical/IR interferometer. The interferometer, which will be sited at the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico, will consist of 8 to 10 1.4m telescopes. The longest baseline in the array is envisaged to be 400m, giving 0.25 milli-arcsecond angular resolution. For more details please refer to our press release.

2002/06/11 The North telescope of the COAST array has been moved to a new foundation, further to the North. The longest baseline is now 67 metres.

2001/10/10 See our fringes and power spectra page for audio files of COAST fringes.

2000/08/02 The two telescopes on the west arm of the COAST array have been re-located. The maximum baseline has been increased to 48 metres. Foundations are in place for a 100m baseline.

2000/04/26 The COAST team's manuscripts from the recent SPIE conference Interferometry in Optical Astronomy (part of Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation, 27-31 March 2000, Munich) are now available on this website.

1998/06/05 A fifth telescope has been sited on the Southwest arm of the COAST array. See our current status page.

See our astronomical results page for details of

• Recently-published images of Betelgeuse(added 2001/01/05)
• Recently-published measurements of cyclic variations in the angular diameter of Chi Cygni. These COAST results clearly show periodic size changes in a second Mira-type variable star (added 2001/01/05)
• The first infrared image from an aperture synthesis array
• The first direct detection of periodic variations in the diameter of a Mira-type variable. A two year study, using both COAST and interferometric measurements at the WHT, has revealed clear evidence for a sustained large-amplitude periodic modulation of the stellar diameter of the Northern Mira, R Leonis.
• Results on the surface structure and limb-darkening profile of Betelgeuse. These include the first resolved image of a star from a separated-element interferometer.

Information about C.O.A.S.T.

• "Building the world's largest optical telescope", a gentle introduction to COAST for non-experts
• An introduction to COAST
• The current status (updated 2001/01/05)
• Astronomical results from COAST (updated 2001/01/05)
• Details of the telescope construction
• Fringes and power spectra
• Some files, including images, that you can download
• A list of papers by members of COAST group
• Current members of the COAST group

Links to Elsewhere

• JPL's Optical Long Baseline Interferometry News including interferometry links
• Cavendish Astrophysics (Cambridge, UK)
• Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (MRAO) (Cambridge, UK)
• Cambridge Astronomy (Cambridge, UK)
• Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge, UK)
• What is a stellar interferometer? From Scientific American's "Ask the Experts"
• Bob Tubbs' PhD thesis

• The COAST manual
• Observing rota and reports
• Extra COAST-related pictures

The COAST web pages are maintained by John Young <J.S.Young@mrao.cam.ac.uk>
Last modified: Thu Nov 20 12:02:28 GMT 2003