Betelgeuse scope: single-mode-fibers-assisted optical interferometer design for dedicated stellar activity monitoring

21 August 2020 Betelgeuse scope: single-mode-fibers-assisted optical interferometer design for dedicated stellar activity monitoring

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Proceedings Volume 11490, Interferometry XX; 114900X (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2568900
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2020, Online Only

Abstract

Betelgeuse has experienced a sudden shift in its brightness and dimmed mysteriously. This is likely caused by a hot blob of plasma ejected from Betelgeuse and then cooled to obscuring dust. If true, it is a remarkable opportunity to directly witness the formation of dust around a red supergiant star. Today's optical telescope facilities are not optimized for monitoring the Betelgeuse surface, so in this work, we propose a low-cost optical interferometer. The facility will consist of 12 x 4 inch optical telescopes mounted to the surface of a large radio dish for model-independent aperture synthesis imaging; polarization-maintaining single-mode fibers will carry the coherent beams from the individual optical telescopes to an all-in-one beam combiner. A fast steering mirror assisted fiber injection system guides the flux into fibers. A metrology system senses vibration-induced piston errors in optical fibers, and these errors are corrected using fast-steering delay lines. We will present the design.

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Narsireddy Anugu, Katie M. Morzinski, Josh Eisner, Ewan Douglas, Dan Marrone, Steve Ertel, Sebastiaan Haffert, Oscar Montoya, Jordan Stone, Stefan Kraus, John Monnier, Jean-Baptiste Lebouquin, Jean-Philippe Berger, Julien Woillez, and Miguel Montargès "Betelgeuse scope: single-mode-fibers-assisted optical interferometer design for dedicated stellar activity monitoring", Proc. SPIE 11490, Interferometry XX, 114900X (21 August 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2568900

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