Palomar Testbed Interferometer (PTI) Data at NExSci
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 operational until December 2008.
PTI's development and early operations were carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) 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 the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) with funding from NASA, the PHASES project, and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC).
PTI Instrument 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 also applies to PTI)
- Some
useful references and links to complete tutorials
PTI Data:
Data Access
- Click here to download a sortable excel file containing sources and observation dates for PTI between 1997-2008.
- Download the entire PTI archive from 1997-2008 (417 Mb)
- Download data for an entire year or an individual date.
- Archive description (including details of modifications made to the metadata files before inclusion in the database).
Data Product Definition
Data Calibration
- Calibration tutorial
- Calibration programs
Observation Planning Support
During PTI operations, NExScI provided observation planning support through the getCal planning package, a suite of tools for meshing information on stars,
selecting calibrators, and computing temporal accessibility and u-v coverage.
If you have any questions on PTI data please visit the
the help desk page.