The addition of new mirrors will make a Flagstaff telescope 10 times more powerful. The massive “Y” shape of the Navy Optical Precision Interferometer stretches across the equivalent of four football fields atop Anderson Mesa southeast of Flagstaff. Three more large mirrors, measuring about a meter in diameter each, will be installed along the arms of the telescope array over the next several months. The mirrors increase the amount of light the system can capture by about by 50 times. Currently, the system can only measure stars that are bright enough to be seen with the naked eye and is capable of seeing a distance equivalent of being able to view an orange in New York City from Flagstaff. The new set up will multiply that by 10.The $3.25 million project was funded through a grant from the Naval Research Laboratory.
