Observatoire de Calern

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The Observatoire du Calern is an observatory in France on the Calern Plateau at an altitude of 1270 m, a few kilometers from the Caussols Plateau , north of the city of Grasse . It is located about 30 km west of Nice and 20 km northeast of Cannes .

The observatory belonged to the Center d'Etudes et de Recherches Géodynamiques et Astronomiques (CERGA) until 1988 ; With a reorganization and the associated dissolution of the CERGA, the Observatoire de Calern became part of the newly founded Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur .

Instruments

The observatory has a Schmidt camera with an opening of 90 cm and a mirror diameter of 152 cm. A number of leading interferometers have been developed under Antoine Labeyrie , including I2T, GI2T the latter consisting of two reflector telescopes with a diameter of 1.5 meters, which can be moved over rails with basic lengths between 13 and 65 meters. In addition, there are prototypes of individual telescopes, the combination of which was examined for a gigantic telescope project (Optical Very Large Array, OVLA). Another interferometer is the Soirdete which is formed by two 1-meter telescopes.

There are also two lasers in the observatory to measure the distance to the moon or to satellites.

literature

  • SK Saha, S. Morel: Perspective of long baseline optical interferometry . In: Bull. Astron. Soc. India , 2000, 28, arxiv : astro-ph / 0003347v1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. M. Faucherre, D. Bonneau, L. Koechlin, F. Vakili: Stellar interferometry - Diameters and effective temperatures of five giant stars . In: Astronomy and Astrophysics , vol. 120, no. 2, April 1983, pp. 263-268, bibcode : 1983A & A ... 120..263F .
  2. D. Mourard, I. Tallon-Bosc, A. Blazit, D. Bonneau, G. Merlin, F. Morand, F. Vakili, A. Labeyrie: The GI2T interferometer on Plateau de Calern . In: Astronomy and Astrophysics , vol. 283, 1994, no. 2, pp. 705-713, bibcode : 1994A & A ... 283..705M
  3. D. Mekarnia, J. Gay: Infrared multispectral interferometry . In: Astronomy and Astrophysics , vol. 238, no. 1-2, Nov. 1990, pp. 469-474, bibcode : 1990A & A ... 238..469M .

Coordinates: 43 ° 45 ′ 10.6 "  N , 6 ° 55 ′ 21.3"  E