Juan Carlos Muñoz

I took this pic a while back at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile. It shows the four Auxiliary Telescopes of the VLT Interferometer, gazing up to the sky. These telescopes work together, achieving a spatial resolution similar to that of a massive telescope as large as the separation between them.

Curious about how this works? Check out our interferometry explainer: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/technology/interferometry/

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophotography

Interferometry

ESO, European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere

Nov 15, 2022 at 9:34amWeb
Show threadJuan Carlos MuñozNov 15, 2022
Before you ask: no, this isn't a replacement for large telescopes! With interferometry we can resolve tiny details, yes, but we can't capture as much light as a single massive telescope, which is key to detect faint objects. Also, when you have just a few telescopes, like 4 in this case, reconstructing the shape of your target is a complex mathematical problem, so this usually works best with objects with relatively simple shapes.
Show threadbetonglenNov 15, 2022

@astro_jcm thank you. this is so beautiful.

wherever is see or hear of telescopes working together to build one picture of the vastness, i wish we could set up systems to do this for all fields instead of 50,000 data systems and dashboards trying to describe the same phenomena.

let's dismantle the #infodemic #InformationOverload before it gets worse

Show threadLeo BurtscherNov 15, 2022
@astro_jcm In that picture, AT3 is clearly looking elsewhere, though... Perhaps it didn't like what the others saw? ;-) More seriously, we can conclude that they observed with AMBER, haven't they?
Show threadJuan Carlos MuñozNov 15, 2022
@leo AT3 was clearly not having it that night :D AMBER had not been decommissioned yet back when I took this image, so that's indeed a possibility. I'll dig the EXIF data later and cross-check it with the archive to confirm it.
Show threadKwigglebikeNov 15, 2022
@astro_jcm Pretty amazing picture, thanks!
Show threadarun sriniNov 15, 2022
@astro_jcm very pretty picture and I learned something new today :) thank you