Betelgeuse scope: single-mode-fibers-assisted optical interferometer design for dedicated stellar activity monitoring

Narsireddy Anugu; Katie M. Morzinski; Josh Eisner; Ewan Douglas; Dan Marrone; Steve Ertel; Sebastiaan Haffert; Oscar Montoya; Jordan Stone; Stefan Kraus; John Monnier; Jean-Baptiste Lebouquin; Jean-Philippe Berger; Julien Woillez; Miguel Montargès

doi:10.1117/12.2568900

21 August 2020 Betelgeuse scope: single-mode-fibers-assisted optical interferometer design for dedicated stellar activity monitoring

Narsireddy Anugu, Katie M. Morzinski, Josh Eisner, Ewan Douglas, Dan Marrone, Steve Ertel, Sebastiaan Haffert, Oscar Montoya, Jordan Stone, Stefan Kraus, John Monnier, Jean-Baptiste Lebouquin, Jean-Philippe Berger, Julien Woillez, Miguel Montargès

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11490, Interferometry XX; 114900X (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2568900
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2020, Online Only

Abstract

Betelgeuse has experienced a sudden shift in its brightness and dimmed mysteriously. This is likely caused by a hot blob of plasma ejected from Betelgeuse and then cooled to obscuring dust. If true, it is a remarkable opportunity to directly witness the formation of dust around a red supergiant star. Today's optical telescope facilities are not optimized for monitoring the Betelgeuse surface, so in this work, we propose a low-cost optical interferometer. The facility will consist of 12 x 4 inch optical telescopes mounted to the surface of a large radio dish for model-independent aperture synthesis imaging; polarization-maintaining single-mode fibers will carry the coherent beams from the individual optical telescopes to an all-in-one beam combiner. A fast steering mirror assisted fiber injection system guides the flux into fibers. A metrology system senses vibration-induced piston errors in optical fibers, and these errors are corrected using fast-steering delay lines. We will present the design.

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Narsireddy Anugu, Katie M. Morzinski, Josh Eisner, Ewan Douglas, Dan Marrone, Steve Ertel, Sebastiaan Haffert, Oscar Montoya, Jordan Stone, Stefan Kraus, John Monnier, Jean-Baptiste Lebouquin, Jean-Philippe Berger, Julien Woillez, and Miguel Montargès "Betelgeuse scope: single-mode-fibers-assisted optical interferometer design for dedicated stellar activity monitoring", Proc. SPIE 11490, Interferometry XX, 114900X (21 August 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2568900

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