APEX takes part in sharpest observation ever

Telescopes in Chile, Hawaii, and Arizona reach sharpness two million times finer than human vision

An international team of astronomers has observed the heart of a distant quasar with unprecedented sharpness, two million times finer than human vision. The observations, made by connecting the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope [1] to two others on different continents for the first time, is a crucial step towards the dramatic scientific goal of the “Event Horizon Telescope” project: imaging the supermassive black holes at the centre of our own galaxy and others.

The telescopes were linked using a technique known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). Larger telescopes can make sharper observations, and interferometry allows multiple telescopes to act like a single telescope as large as the separation — or “baseline” — between them.

Using VLBI, the sharpest observations can be achieved by making the separation between telescopes as large as possible. For their quasar observations, the team used the three telescopes to create an interferometer with transcontinental baseline lengths of 9447 km from Chile to Hawaii, 7174 km from Chile to Arizona and 4627 km from Arizona to Hawaii. Connecting APEX in Chile to the network was crucial, as it contributed the longest baselines.

Credit ESO
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1229/

Music with thanks to:-
“Balada do Tejo feat. André Coelho” (by M-PeX) from Album M-PeX: ODÝSSEIA
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/M-PeX/ODYSSEIA/Balada_do_Tejo_feat_Andr_Coelho
Balada do Tejo feat. André Coelho by M-PeX is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.
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