The Keck Interferometer

Mike Shao
Jet Propulsion Laboratory


The Keck Interferometer is a NASA-funded project between the Jet Propulsion
Lab and CARA to connect the two 10m Keck telescopes as an interferometer as
well as add four 1.8m outrigger telescopes to be used eventually as a 
6-element coherent array. The team recently obtained fringes from two 50cm
siderostats at the Keck site. The scientific goals of the Keck
Interferometer include the astrometric detection of planets with the
outriggers, the direct detection of hot Jupiters with the 10m telescopes, 
and the detection of exo-zodiacal dust around nearby stars down to a few 
times the zodiacal density of our own solar system.