干涉成像,显微宇宙

A Microscopic View of the Cosmology with Interferometric Imaging

与传统的几何成像相比,干涉成像不那么直观,要用复杂的数学方法才能从观测数据重建出目标图像。但是,它的成像分辨率可以突破单台望远镜口径的限制,与望远镜之间的最大基线长度成正比。这使得天文学家可以在现有技术条件下,不断提高成像的分辨率。目前天文干涉阵的角分辨率可以达到毫角秒乃至亚毫角秒级水平,成为探索宇宙多尺度细致结构的有力工具。在发展的历程中,干涉成像产生了一批具有里程碑意义的科学成果。将来,干涉成像也将成为探索黑洞视界、地外行星等一批极具挑战性课题的主要手段。

Compare to the traditional geometric imaging,interferometric imaging in which complicated mathematical method is needed to reconstruct the original object is not intuitive.However,the angular resolution of an interferometric array,which is proportional to its maximum baseline,will not be limited by the size of individual telescope.The angular resolution of interferometric array is increasing rapidly.Now,the highest resolution is about milliarcsecond or even sub-milliarcsecond level,which makes interferomtric arrays the most powerful tools to study the multi-scale fine structures of the cosmology.In the history of interferometric imaging,it has incubated a lot of landmark scientific results.In future,interferometric imaging will be the key methods to explore some challenging objects,such as black hole,extraterrestial planets.