Keck Telescopes Gaze into Young Star's 'Life Zone.'

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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2421

Keck Telescopes Gaze into Young Star's 'Life Zone.'
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
December 23, 2009

The inner regions of young planet-forming disks offer information about
how worlds like Earth form, but not a single telescope in the world can
see them. Now, for the first time, astronomers using the W. M. Keck
Observatory in Hawaii have measured the properties of a young solar
system at distances closer to the star than Venus is from our sun.

To achieve the feat, the team used the Keck Interferometer to combine
infrared light gathered by both of the observatory's twin 10-meter
(98-foot) telescopes, which are separated by 85 meters (93 yards). The
double-barreled approach gives astronomers the effective resolution of a
single 85-meter telescope -- several times larger than any now planned.

"Nothing else in the world provides us with the types of measurements
the Keck Interferometer does," said Wesley Traub of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "In effect, it's a zoom lens
for the Keck telescopes."

The Keck Interferometer was developed by JPL and the W.M. Keck
Observatory. It is managed by the W.M. Keck Observatory, which operates
two 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea on
the island of Hawaii and is a scientific partnership of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the University of California and
NASA. NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute, also in Pasadena, manages time
allocation on the telescope for NASA.

For more information, please visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/keck-life-zone.html