Magdalena Ridge Observatory
The Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) project is a collaboration between New Mexico Tech (NMT), the University of Cambridge, and an observatory consortium which includes New Mexico State University (NMSU), New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU), the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The Magdalena Ridge Observatory project is overseen by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
Support for UK involvement in the MRO was endorsed by PPARC in 2005, following the summission, review and assessment of a proposal submitted to the Project Peer Review Panel (PPRP). The proposal Introduction and Case for Support summarise the context and the scientific and technical drivers for a long baseline optical/IR imaging interferometer.
The observatory will comprise two facilities, a single 2.4 meter telescope and an optical/infrared telescope array, the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer (MROI).
MRO Interferometer
![[The MROI telescopes are arranged
in a Y-shaped array]](MROI_closepacked.png)
Schematic of MROI showing ten telescopes in a close-packed configuration. The shortest baseline in this configuration is 7.5m. Light collected by the telescopes is transported in evacuated beam relay pipes to the Beam Combining Facility building, where the paths travelled by the light from different telescopes are equalised by the delay lines (in the pipes shown top right), before the light beams are interfered on optical tables in the Beam Combining Area.
MROI will, in its initial phase, consist of six 1.4m diameter telescopes. The telescopes will be moveable between sets of discrete foundations, allowing baselines (inter-telescope spacings) between 7.5m and 340m in length. The longest baseline will give an angular resolution of 0.6 milli-arcsecond at 1 micron wavelength, more than a factor 100 better than that possible with the Hubble Space Telescope.
The MROI design is strictly optimised for imaging of faint (magnitude 14 in the near-infrared H band) targets. Thus observations with MROI will address a broad range of topical problems in astrophysics, notably:
- Characterisation of dust torii and verification of the unified model for Active Galactic Nuclei
- Investigating accretion processes in young stellar objects; detection of the signatures of planet formation
- Understanding pulsation, convection, and the onset of mass loss in evolved stars
- Studying ejecta from interacting binary stars
MROI is described in the following publications:
- D. F. Buscher et al. (2006), "The Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer: a high-sensitivity imaging array"
- M. J. Creech-Eakman et al. (2006), "Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer: status update"
- M. J. Creech-Eakman et al. (2004), "The Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer: A fully optimized aperture synthesis array for imaging"
The current status of MROI is described on the MRO website.
Latest (July 2008) news on the MROI project can be found in a SPIE news item.
Cavendish Involvement
The optical interferometry team at the Cavendish Laboratory are leading the system design for MROI. We are also contracted to deliver the vacuum delay lines for the interferometer, and expect to be involved in delivering other MROI subsystems.