First measurements and upgrade plans of the MAGIC intensity interferometer
arXiv:2209.14844 · doi:10.1117/12.2629876
Abstract
The two MAGIC 17-m diameter Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes have been equipped to work also as an intensity interferometer with a deadtime-free, 4-channel, GPU-based, real-time correlator. Operating with baselines between approx. 40 and 90 m the MAGIC interferometer is able to measure stellar diameters of 0.5-1 mas in the 400-440 nm wavelength range with a sensitivity roughly 10 times better than that achieved in the 1970s by the Narrabri Stellar Intensity Interferometer. Besides, active mirror control allows to split the primary mirrors into sub-mirrors. This allows to make simultaneous calibration measurements of the zero-baseline correlation or to simultaneously collect six baselines below 17 m with almost arbitrary orientation, corresponding to angular scales of approx. 1-50 mas. We plan to perform test observations adding the nearby Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) LST-1 23 m diameter telescope by next year. All three telescope pairs will be correlated simultaneously. Adding LST-1 is expected to increase the sensitivity by at least 1 mag and significantly improve the u-v plane coverage. If successful, the proposed correlator setup is scalable enough to be implemented to the full CTA arrays.
15 pages, 9 figures, 1 table, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2022
References in corpus (5)
- The major upgrade of the MAGIC telescopes, Part II: A performance study using observations of the Crab Nebula
- The major upgrade of the MAGIC telescopes, Part I: The hardware improvements and the commissioning of the system
- Fundamental Parameters of 87 Stars from the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer
- Optical intensity interferometry observations using the MAGIC imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes
- I3T: Intensity Interferometry Imaging Telescope