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The National Radio Astronomy Observatory has undertaken an ambitious project that is intended to control our 100m primary Gregorian telescope, the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), at frequencies up to 115Ghz. In order to ensure adequate efficiency and pointing performance, the net wavefront path errors need to be less than 1/16 of a wave and the telescope pointed to 1.2 arcsec over periods of an hour. The Precision Telescope Control System, an architecture that generates control signals for the telescope servomechanisms on the basis of telescope metrology and models, seeks to extend the domain of environments for which high frequency observations can be effectively performed. We will present an overview of the GBT and the PTCS architecture, discuss our algorithmic and computational approaches, and present preliminary results of our characterization of the GBT and inferences about the ultimate potential of the GBT for 3mm observations.
Details on the current work on the Keck Interferometer will be presented. Of significant interest are the engineering accomplishments that have made the first published science results possible at what is currently the world's most sensitive near-infrared interferometer. Those results include observations of the young stellar object DG Tau, and the first near-IR interferometric observations of an extragalactic object. Enhanced observational modes, including nulling and differential phase, are to be installed in 2004 and will be also discussed.
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