NExSci PTI Support Page
The Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI) was a near-infrared, long-baseline stellar interferometer located at Palomar Observatory in California. First fringes were obtained in July 1995 and it was operated until December 2008.
PTI's development and early operations were carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, with funding from NASA under its TOPS, ASEPS, and Origins programs, with additional funding from the JPL Director's Discretionary Fund and the JPL Director's Research and Development Fund. Subsequent science operations were carried out by NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI), California Institute of Technology, with funding from NASA, the PHASES project, and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC).
PTI description:
- PTI description
- V2 sensitivities
- Complete instrument description (journal paper)
- Description of fringe measurement (journal paper)
- Requested acknowledgement if publishing PTI data or using NExScI services
General interferometry information:
- What is a visibility? (uses the Keck Interferometer as an example, but applies as well to PTI)
- Some
useful references and links to complete tutorials
- JPL's PlanetQuest website
For PTI V2observations the NExScI provides the following types of support:
Observation Planning Support
The getCal planning package provides a suite of tools for meshing information on stars,
selecting calibrators, and computing temporal accessibility and u-v
coverage.
Data Product Definition
Data Access
PTI data are available for download through a web interface.
- Archive web interface
- Archive description (including details of modifications made to the metadata files before inclusion in the database).
Data Calibration
- Calibration tutorial
- Calibration programs
If you have any questions on PTI data please visit the
the help desk page.