Complex Stellar System Research Articles

Imaging Optical interferometry

AbstractInterferometry at optical wavelengths is very similar to radio interferometry, once the fundamental differences in detectors are accounted for. The Mount Wilson Mark III optical interferometer has been used for optical interferometry of stars and stellar systems. Success with the Mark III has lead to the current program at the Naval Research Laboratory to build the Big Optical Array (BOA), which will be an imaging interferometer. Imaging simulations show that BOA will be able to produce images of complex stellar systems, with a resolution as fine as 0.2 milliarcseconds.

Variable Stars and Problems of Stellar Formation

The possibility of discovering phenomenologically similar objects either located in different stellar systems, or in totally different (according to their origin and age) parts of some complex stellar system (as, for instance, our Galaxy) is of extreme importance. The detection of such objects permits us to confirm that, in spite of different initial conditions and evolutionary paths, stars of quite different origin pass in the course of their evolution through the same stages.