MAUNA KEA, Hawaii (January 13, 2006) A team of scientists in partnership with the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii have successfully passed the first test in a project that will link the seven largest telescopes on Mauna Kea together to create a gigantic imaging instrument nearly one half mile (800 meters) in diameter. The ‘OHANA (Optical Hawaiian Array for Nanoradian Astronomy) array, or “interferometer,” will provide ultra-high resolution images of the near-infrared universe, 80 times more accurate than a single 10-meter Keck telescope. The results of the first successful test between the two Keck telescopes are described in the January 13th issue of Science.

An interferometer is a type of instrument that combines light from two or more telescopes to obtain measurements with higher resolution than what could be obtained with a single telescope alone. With conventional telescopes, the size of a single, primary mirror will determine its ability to resolve small-scale structure on the sky. But with an interferometer, the distance between the telescopes, or “baseline,” will determine the angular resolution.

“The next large telescopes will certainly be 30 to 50 meters in diameter, when some of the answers we are looking for would require mile-long diameters. Only interferometers can achieve this; and the Mauna Kea summit is the only place where we can find large optical telescopes spread over such distances,” said Dr. Fred Chaffee, director of the W. M. Keck Observatory.

The `OHANA project, named after the Hawaiian word for family and extended family, will eventually link the Subaru Telescope, NASA Infrared Telescope, Gemini Observatory, Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope Facility and the Keck I and Keck II telescopes together with “single-mode” optical fibers never used before to transport the light between telescopes.

“The use of fibers to transport the light between telescopes is one of the main challenges of the `OHANA project,” said Dr. Olivier Lai, resident astronomer at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

When complete, ‘OHANA will be the most highest-resolution, near-infrared instrument in the world -- capable of producing images with an unprecedented resolution of 0.5 milliarcseconds, about the size of an edge of paper as seen from one hundred miles away. It will be used to take detailed images of stellar surfaces, giant gas planets, long-period variable stars and significantly advance the understanding of stellar astrophysics.

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