Many interesting things are afoot at the Navy Precision Optical Interferometer

The Navy Precision Optical Interferometer (NPOI) is currently undergoing a fundamental renaissance in its functionality and capabilities. Operationally, its fast delay line (FDL) infrastructure is completing its upgrade from a VME/VxWorks foundation to a modern PC/RTLinux core. The Classic beam combiner is being upgraded with the New Classic FPGA-based backend, and the VISION beam combiner has been upgraded over this past summer with low-noise EMCCD cameras, resulting in substantial gains in sensitivity. Building on those infrastructure improvements, substantial upgrades are also in progress. Three 1-meter PlaneWave CDK1000 telescopes are being delivered to the site, along with their relocatable enclosure-transporters, and stations are being commissioned for those telescopes with baselines ranging from 8 meters to 432 meters. Baseline-wavelength bootstrapping will be implemented on the facility back-end with a near-infrared beam combiner under development. Collectively, these improvements mark substantial progress in taking the facility towards realizing its full intrinsic potential.

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