Julien Woillez, Peter Wizinowich, Rachel Akeson, Mark Colavita, Josh Eisner, Rafael Millan-Gabet, John Monnier, Jorg-Uwe Pott, Sam Ragland, Eric Appleby, Andrew Cooper, Claude Felizardo, Jennifer Herstein, Olivier Martin, Drew Medeiros, Douglas Morrison, Tatyana Panteleeva, Brett Smith, Kellee Summers, Kevin Tsubota, Colette Tyau, Ed Wetherell
Ground-based long baseline interferometers have long been limited in sensitivity by the short integration periods imposed by atmospheric turbulence. The first observation fainter than this limit was performed on January 22, 2011 when the Keck Interferometer observed a K=11.5 target, about one magnitude fainter than its K=10.3 limit. This observation was made possible by the Dual Field Phase Referencing instrument of the ASTRA project: simultaneously measuring the real-time effects of the atmosphere on a nearby bright guide star, and correcting for it on the faint target, integration time longer than the turbulence time scale are made possible. As a prelude to this demonstration, we first present the implementation of Dual Field Phase Referencing on the interferometer. We then detail its on-sky performance focusing on the accuracy of the turbulence correction, and on the resulting fringe contrast stability. We conclude with a presentation of early results obtained with Laser Guide Star AO and the interferometer.
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http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.5019
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