ASTRA web home

How to use the ASTRA web:

This page is designed to give a quick overlook about the ASTRA project of the Keck interferometer.
Most information is given in pdf documents, which require the reader to click on the respective links to read them with a browser-integrated reader or to download the files and read them locally. An installation of the free Acrobat Reader(download) in combination with a current version of a browser like Firefox (download) is suggested.

For a test of your configuration try to read this linked document: click_here

Overview

ASTRA stands for the
ASTrometric and phase-Referenced Astronomy upgrade
of the Keck Interferometer project

An introduction is given here

Some background information about dual-field phase-referencing, the central technology of ASTRA: background

ASTRA was presented at the AAS meeting in 2008: AAS08 poster

See your own first fringes with an interferometry demonstrator: demo



Acknowledgments:
The W. M. Keck Observatory is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.
The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. The Keck Interferometer is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The ASTRA upgrade is funded by the Major Research Instrumentation program of the National Science Foundation.