The Keck Interferometer
Abstract
The Keck Interferometer (KI) combined the two 10 m W. M. Keck Observatory telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, as a long-baseline near- and mid-infrared interferometer. Funded by NASA, it operated from 2001 until 2012. KI used adaptive optics on the two Keck telescopes to correct the individual wavefronts, as well as active fringe tracking in all modes for path-length control, including the implementation of cophasing to provide long coherent integration times. KI implemented high sensitivity fringe-visibility measurements at H (1.6 μm), K (2.2 μm), and L (3.8 μm) bands, and nulling measurements at N band (10 μm), which were used to address a broad range of science topics. Supporting these capabilities was an extensive interferometer infrastructure and unique instrumentation, including some additional functionality added as part of the NSF-funded ASTRA program. This paper provides an overview of the instrument architecture and some of the key design and implementation decisions, as well as a description of all of the key elements and their configuration at the end of the project. The objective is to provide a view of KI as an integrated system, and to provide adequate technical detail to assess the implementation. Included is a discussion of the operational aspects of the system, as well as of the achieved system performance. Finally, details on V^2 calibration in the presence of detector nonlinearities as applied in the data pipeline are provided.
Additional Information
© 2013 Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Received 2013 May 28; accepted 2013 August 14; published 2013 September 23. The Keck Interferometer was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Observations presented here were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. The ASTRA upgrade to KI was funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. AST0619965. Part of this work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, and at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. Thanks to the referee for helpful comments.Attached Files
Published - 673475.pdf
Files
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:3e0e8fc23f39ee678dfdc2b0f1ab09fb
|
2.6 MB | Preview Download |
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 42789
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20131203-090250079
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- NSF
- AST-0619965
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
-
2013-12-03Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)