Aperture Masking Resolves Bright Star
BERKELEY, Calif. -- BERKELEY, Calif. -- To study the secrets of a massive, bright blue star, astronomers at the University of California’s Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory dusted off an old technique -- aperture masking interferometry -- and applied it to one of the world’s shiniest telescopes, the Keck 1 at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. More than 100 years old, the technique masks a telescope’s aperture to form a series of separate circular areas over the secondary mirror -- in effect, a series of...