Abstract
The VERITAS Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) array was augmented in 2019 with high-speed focal plane electronics to allow its use for Stellar Intensity Interferometry (SII) observations. Since January 2019, The VERITAS Stellar Interferometer (VSII) recorded more than 250 hours of moonlit observations on 39 different bright stars and binary systems (mV < 3.74) at an effective optical wavelength of 416 nm. These observations resulted in the measurement of the diameters of several stars with better than 5% resolution. This talk will describe the status of the VSII survey and analysis.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 803 |
| Journal | Proceedings of Science |
| Volume | 395 |
| State | Published - Mar 18 2022 |
| Event | 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2021 - Virtual, Berlin, Germany Duration: Jul 12 2021 → Jul 23 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research is supported by grants from the US Department of Energy Office of Science, the US National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and NSERC in Canada. This research used resources provided by the Open Science Grid, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a US Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. The authors gratefully acknowledge support under NSF Grant #AST 1806262 for the fabrication and commissioning of the VERITAS-SII instrumentation. We acknowledge the excellent work of the technical support staff at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and the collaborating institutions in the construction and operation of the instrument.
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