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June 4, 2007
Altair
Astronomers have captured an image of Altair, the first time anyone has detailed the surface of a star like our own sun.While astronomers have recently imaged a few of the enormous, dying, red-giant stars, this is the first time anyone has seen the surface of a relatively tiny hydrogen-burning star.
An international team of astronomers captured the portrait of Altair using four of the six telescopes at a facility on Mt. Wilson, CA, operated by the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA).
The CHARA telescopes made the breakthrough observation owing to a novel system that cleaned up some of the distortions from Earth's atmosphere, the Michigan Infrared Combiner. Recent advances in fiber optic telecommunication technology made this new combiner possible.
Using the telescopes as an interferometer, a multi-telescope system, the researchers captured infrared lightwaves like a giant telescope 265 meters by 195 meters (100 times the size of the mirror on NASA's Hubble telescope and roughly 25 times the resolution).
This is a really amazing image of the star Altair that is featured over at Space.com as their image of the day. The star appears to be much like our sun. It's amazing what they can do these days with a few telescopes. The quaulity of the image is astounding.
Read more over at Space.com.
Posted by Dianne at June 4, 2007 1:44 PM
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