Harold A. McAlister, Regent’s
Professor of Astronomy at Georgia
State, has been awarded
the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s 2007 prize for innovation in research
instruments and techniques.
McAlister and the CHARA Array
Project Team – which he led – won the award for developing and building the
most powerful interferoptic telescope array in the world. The Center for High
Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA), as the array is called, is a group of six
1-meter telescopes that provides the resolving power of a telescope a fifth of
a mile in diameter. It is located at the Mt.
Wilson Observatory in California.
CHARA observations have led to
the first angular resolution measurements of some of the smallest stars. The
array was also recently used to make the first direct measurement of the radius
of a planet outside of the solar system.
The Astronomy Society of the
Pacific, founded in 1889 in San
Francisco, is one of the nation’s leading
organizations devoted to improving people’s understanding, appreciation, and
enjoyment of astronomy in space.
