Multimedia Gallery
Detailed Picture of Star (Image 2)
Astronomers peering far into space using the world's largest infrared telescope can be likened to a person trying to read a newspaper that is one hundred miles away. The CHARA (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy) Interferometer at Georgia State University, along with the Michigan Infrared Combiner (MIRC), make up the facility on Mount Wilson in California that has just imaged the star Altair, an object roughly one million times farther from us than the sun. CHARA is made up of six infrared telescopes with the MIRC being the rectangular building in the middle. Combining the light-capturing ability of four of the telescopes, the astronomers created an effective telescope diameter of approximately 250 meters, about 100 times bigger than the mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope.
This image accompanied NSF press release, "Gazing up at the Man in the Star?" [See related image Here.]
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only.
Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation.
Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.
Also Available:
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (2.1 MB)
Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer.