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John D. Monnier, Peter G. Tuthill, Charles H. Townes, Manfred Bester, William C. Danchi, David Hale, Everett Lipman (UC Berkeley)
The Keck-I telescope has been converted into a VLA-style interferometric array using aperture masking techniques, allowing infrared imaging with true diffraction-limited resolution (<60 mas at 2.2 microns). This represents nearly a factor of 3 increase in resolution over most previous observations in the near-IR, sufficient to resolve clumpy, asymmetric mass-loss on the AGB and circumstellar material around Wolf-Rayets and YSOs. Proper motions of dust features are also reported, yielding critical dynamical information and providing new insight into the mass-loss processes of evolved stars.
In addition, I will discuss a unique experiment on the 10 micron heterodyne interferometer, the Infrared Spatial Interferometer. An RF filterbank has recently been constructed and installed, allowing interferometry with spectral resolution as high as \lambda/\Delta \lambda ~5\times 105. Application of this technique to studying molecule formation around AGB stars is described, and initial results on IRC +10216 and VY CMa presented.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: monnier@sunspot.ssl.berkeley.edu