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Register a new userThe VERITAS-Stellar Intensity Interferometry (VSII) survey of Stellar Diameters
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The VERITAS Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) array was augmented in 2019 with high-speed focal plane electronics to allow its use for Stellar Intensity Interferometry (SII) observations. Since January 2019, the VERITAS Stellar Interferometer (VSII) recorded more than 250 hours of moonlit observations on 39 different bright stars and binary systems ($m_V < 3.74$) at an effective optical wavelength of 416 nm. These observations resulted in the measurement of the diameters of several stars with better than 5% resolution. This talk will describe the status of the VSII survey and analysis.
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The VERITAS Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescope array (IACT) was augmented in 2019 with high-speed focal plane electronics to allow the use of VERITAS for Stellar Intensity Interferometry (SII) observations. Since that time, several improvements have been implemented to increase the sensitivity of the VERITAS Stellar Intensity Interferometer (VSII) and increase the speed of nightly data processing. This poster will describe the use of IACT arrays for performing ultra-high resolution (sub-milliarcsecond) astronomical observations at short visible wavelengths. The poster presentation will include a description of the VERITAS-SII focal plane, data acquisition, and data analysis systems. The poster concludes with a description of plans for future upgrades of the VSII instrument.
High angular resolution observations at optical wavelengths provide valuable insights in stellar astrophysics, directly measuring fundamental stellar parameters, and probing stellar atmospheres, circumstellar disks, elongation of rapidly rotating stars, and pulsations of Cepheid variable stars. The angular size of most stars are of order one milli-arcsecond or less, and to spatially resolve stellar disks and features at this scale requires an optical interferometer using an array of telescopes with baselines on the order of hundreds of meters. We report on the successful implementation of a stellar intensity interferometry system developed for the four VERITAS imaging atmospheric-Cherenkov telescopes. The system was used to measure the angular diameter of the two sub-mas stars $beta$ Canis Majoris and $epsilon$ Orionis with a precision better than 5%. The system utilizes an off-line approach where starlight intensity fluctuations recorded at each telescope are correlated post-observation. The technique can be readily scaled onto tens to hundreds of telescopes, providing a capability that has proven technically challenging to current generation optical amplitude interferometry observatories. This work demonstrates the feasibility of performing astrophysical measurements with imaging atmospheric-Cherenkov telescope arrays as intensity interferometers and the promise for integrating an intensity interferometry system within future observatories such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array.
The angular size of a star is a critical factor in determining its basic properties. Direct measurement of stellar angular diameters is difficult: at interstellar distances stars are generally too small to resolve by any individual imaging telescope. This fundamental limitation can be overcome by studying the diffraction pattern in the shadow cast when an asteroid occults a star, but only when the photometric uncertainty is smaller than the noise added by atmospheric scintillation. Atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes used for particle astrophysics observations have not generally been exploited for optical astronomy due to the modest optical quality of the mirror surface. However, their large mirror area makes them well suited for such high-time-resolution precision photometry measurements. Here we report two occultations of stars observed by the VERITAS Cherenkov telescopes with millisecond sampling, from which we are able to provide a direct measurement of the occulted stars angular diameter at the $leq0.1$ milliarcsecond scale. This is a resolution never achieved before with optical measurements and represents an order of magnitude improvement over the equivalent lunar occultation method. We compare the resulting stellar radius with empirically derived estimates from temperature and brightness measurements, confirming the latter can be biased for stars with ambiguous stellar classifications.
We present the Mid-infrared stellar Diameters and Fluxes compilation Catalogue (MDFC) dedicated to long-baseline interferometry at mid-infrared wavelengths (3-13 mum). It gathers data for half a million stars, i.e. nearly all the stars of the Hipparcos-Tycho catalogue whose spectral type is reported in the SIMBAD database. We cross-match 26 databases to provide basic information, binarity elements, angular diameter, magnitude and flux in the near and mid-infrared, as well as flags that allow us to identify the potential calibrators. The catalogue covers the entire sky with 465 857 stars, mainly dwarfs and giants from B to M spectral types closer than 18 kpc. The smallest reported values reach 0.16 muJy in L and 0.1 muJy in N for the flux, and 2 microarcsec for the angular diameter. We build 4 lists of calibrator candidates for the L- and N-bands suitable with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) sub- and main arrays using the MATISSE instrument. We identify 1 621 candidates for L and 44 candidates for N with the Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs), 375 candidates for both bands with the ATs, and 259 candidates for both bands with the Unit Telescopes (UTs). Predominantly cool giants, these sources are small and bright enough to belong to the primary lists of calibrator candidates. In the near future, we plan to measure their angular diameter with 1% accuracy.
Stellar Intensity Interferometry is a technique based on the measurement of the second order spatial correlation of the light emitted from a star. The physical information provided by these measurements is the angular size and structure of the emitting source. A worldwide effort is presently under way to implement stellar intensity interferometry on telescopes separated by long baselines and on future arrays of Cherenkov telescopes. We describe an experiment of this type, realized at the Asiago Observatory (Italy), in which we performed for the first time measurements of the correlation counting photon coincidences in post-processing by means of a single photon software correlator and exploiting entirely the quantum properties of the light emitted from a star. We successfully detected the temporal correlation of Vega at zero baseline and performed a measurement of the correlation on a projected baseline of $sim$2 km. The average discrete degree of coherence at zero baseline for Vega is $< g^{(2)} > , = 1.0034 pm 0.0008$, providing a detection with a signal-to-noise ratio $S/N gtrsim 4$. No correlation is detected over the km baseline. The measurements are consistent with the expected degree of spatial coherence for a source with the 3.3 mas angular diameter of Vega. The experience gained with the Asiago experiment will serve for future implementations of stellar intensity interferometry on long-baseline arrays of Cherenkov telescopes.
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