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Those are absolutely breathtaking. I never thought I'd see images like this with such clarity.

I just read they're the result of 66 dishes aimed at the sky. Do they also use the Earth's position around the sun 6 months apart, or are these images created with relatively short observations?

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In interferometry [0], you need your telescope components to be collecting data simultaneously so that you can interfere their collected light together - so the maximum possible separation is about the diameter of the Earth. (The VLBA [1] and the EHT [2] make use of most of this potential.)

There have been proposals to extend this maximum baseline by having space-borne interferometers (perhaps orbiting the Sun), but practically, they are a few decades away at best. [3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Long_Baseline_Array

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_Horizon_Telescope

[3] https://www.noao.edu/meetings/interferometry/workshop-files/...

Ah yes. I confused two different ideas. Thanks for the links

Skimming through the pre-print (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.04040.pdf), it doesn't look like they're using the Earth's position along the orbit.

Looks like on the order of ~hour per target.

Thank you

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