KEYWORDS: Cameras, Telescopes, Sensors, Stars, Data acquisition, Signal to noise ratio, K band, Mirrors, Design, Infrared cameras, Data acquisition boards, Astronomical telescopes
The newly installed Silmaril beam combiner at the CHARA array is designed to observe previously inaccessible faint targets, including Active Galactic Nuclei and T-Tauri Young Stellar Objects. Silmaril leverages cuttingedge optical design, low readout noise, and a high-speed C-RED1 camera to realize its sensitivity objectives. In this presentation, we offer a comprehensive overview of the instrument’s software, which manages critical functions, including camera data acquisition, fringe tracking, automatic instrument alignment, and observing interfaces, all aimed at optimizing on-sky data collection. Additionally, we offer an outline of the data reduction pipeline, responsible for converting raw instrument data products into the final OIFITS used by the standard interferometry modeling software. Finally, a thorough analysis of the camera and instrument characterization results will be presented, evaluating instrument performance in terms of sensitivity. The purpose of this paper is to provide a solid reference for studies based on Silmaril data.
The enduring technique of aperture masking interferometry, now more than 150 years old, is still widely practised today for it opens a window of high angular resolution astronomy that remains difficult to access by any competing technology. However, the requirement to apodise the pupil into a non-redundant array dramatically limits the throughput, typically to 10% or less. This in turn has a dramatic impact on the sensitivity so that only bright classes of science have been targeted. This paper presents “Jewel masks”, a novel technology that leverages the gains in signal fidelity conferred by non-redundant Fizeau beam combination without the sensitivity penalty incurred by traditional aperture masks. Our approach fragments the pupil with a set of phase wedges, producing several sets of sparse-array tilings. After extensive searching, solutions were found where all individual sets are fully non-redundant. Each set is assigned a common phase wedge which diverts that pattern onto a defined region of the sensor. We describe transmissive and reflective implementations, as well as a case study of a VAMPIRES mask with realistic fabrication errors.
The TOLIMAN mission will fly a low-cost space telescope designed and led from the University of Sydney. Its primary science targets an audacious outcome in planetary astrophysics: an exhaustive search for temperateorbit rocky planets around either star in the Alpha Centauri AB binary, our nearest neighbour star system. By performing narrow-angle astrometric monitoring of the binary at extreme precision, any exoplanets betray their presence by gravitationally, engraving a tell-tale perturbation on the orbit. Recovery of this challenging signal, only of order micro-arcseconds of deflection, is normally thought to require a large (meter-class) instrument. By implementing significant innovations optical and signal encoding architecture, the TOLIMAN space telescope aims to recover such signals with a telescope aperture of only a 12.5cm. Here we describe the key features of the mission: its optics, signal encoding and the 16U CubeSat spacecraft bus in which the science payload is housed - all of which are now under construction. With science operations forecast on a timescale of a year, TOLIMAN aims to determine if the Sun’s nearest neighbour hosts a potential planetary stepping stone into the galaxy. Success would lay down a visionary challenge for futuristic high speed probe technologies capable of traversing the interstellar voids.
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