Continuously movable telescopes for optical interferometry

Abstract

Some consequences of using continuously movable telescopes for optical astronomical image formation by aperture synthesis techniques are discussed. A simple derivation of the telescope motions is given for two cases. In the first, the telescopes move so as to lie on an ellipse which is continuously deforming with time as the source is tracked. In the second case, they lie on a straight line perpendicular to the line of sight to the star, and fixed-length optical fibers carry the light to the detector. The physical meaning of the resulting formulae and their consequences for the interferometer design are discussed.