The CHARA Array Wiki

• The Palomar Testbed Interferometer Calibrator
  • G. van Belle, et al.
  • Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series 176, 276-292 (2008)
• A catalog of bright calibrator stars for 200-m baseline near-infrared stellar interferometry
  • A. Mérand, P. Bordé and V. Coudé du Foresto
  • Astron. Astrophys. 433, 1155-1162 (2005)
  • Addendum
  • CDS Catalog Listing
• A catalogue of calibrator stars for long baseline stellar interferometry
  • P. Bordé, V. Coudé du Foresto, G. Chagnon and G. Perrin
  • Astron. Astrophys. 393, 183-193 (2002).
  • CDS Catalog Listing
• Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer
  • Catalog (ASCII text file)
  • List maintained by Christian Hummel
• First results from the ESO VLTI calibrators program
  • A. Richichi and I. Percheron
  • Astron. Astrophys. 434, 1201-1209 (2005).
  • Catalog of measured reference stars
• VLTI Calibrator Selector
  • Calibrators chosen from a fixed list
• Query catalogs directly from CDS

getCal is an interferometric observation planning software suite: it and its constituent tools can be used to resolve common star names into standard catalog designations and astrometry; extract visibility calibrators from the Hipparcos catalog according to a variety of geometric, brightness, and astrophysical criteria; compute target zenith and delay accessibility; interface with the Simbad astronomical database, the PTI and KI sequencer GUIs, visibility calibration codes, and sky visualization software. getCal also has other uses, is extremely portable, can be autonomously driven over a list of sources, and can be accessed either from either the Unix command line or a (Perl/Tk) GUI.

ASPRO-VLTI provides tools to determine the optimal VLTI configuration and interferometric calibrators to achieve the user's astrophysical goals. The optimization is performed through estimating synthetic interferometric observables (visibilities) as well as through fitting theoretical models on these quantities. The fitting process takes into account the measurement errors of the interferometric signal.

A graphical user interface software tool written in the Interactive Data Language (IDL) to help plan interferometric observations with the CHARA Array. The GUI allows the user to select (1) the waveband for the observation, (2) the target HD number from Hipparcos catalog, (3) and angular diameter, (4) a CHARA baseline, (5) the Pipes of Pan “POP” configuration, and (6) date. Numerous ploting options are available. The software calculates for which hour angles the Optical Path Length Compensator delay compensation is possible and also calculates the time of astronomical twilight.

Registry of stars maintained by Christian Hummel at the European Southern Observatory, and originally hosted by Prof. John Monnier at the University of Michigan. Stars are listed that are known to be poor calibrators for certain baselines and wavelengths.

• CHARM2: An updated Catalog of High Angular Resolution Measurements
  • A. Richichi, I. Percheron and M. Khristoforova
  • Astron. Astrophys 431, 773-777 (2005).
  • CDS Catalog Listing, A. Richichi's download site
  • CDROM available free of charge by request to arichich[at]eso.org, or ipercher[at]eso.org.
• Catalogue of Apparent Diameters and Absolute Radii of Stars (CADARS) - Third edition -Comments and statistics
  • L. E. Pasinetti Fracassini, L. Pastori, S. Covino, and A. Pozzi
  • Astron. Astrophys. 367, 521-524 (2001)
  • CDS Catalog Listing

The VLTI group have an ongoing calibrator program to develop a catalog which will be made publically available.

• A. Richichi., I. Percheron, 2000, The VLTI Main Source Catalogue, VLT-TRE-ESO-15000-2416
• VLTI Calibrators Program, Richichi and Percheron (2001).

As suggested by Rachel Akeson (MSC) a simple common calibrator catalog would have at the following.

• Source Name
• Coordinates
• Magnitudes
• Spectral Type
• Estimated Size
• Who added it to the list

It would then be useful to have a web interface for

• Download of sources into the database
• Simple searches by name, position, etc…

Updated 12 September 2008