What is a Hypertelescope?
A so-called hypertelescope is an optical interferometric array, or set of telescopes, arranged in a large lens-shape, working together to resolve astronomical images at much higher angular resolutions than would be possible with each telescope alone. In fact, such a hypertelescope can allow an angular resolution approaching the resolution the telescope would have if its entire lens were as big as the distance across the array. For arrays with sizes in the kilometers or megameters, this can be very significant. However, angular resolution is not the only meaningful quality of telescopes, causing most astronomers to see the hypertelescope as a specialized instrument. The hypertelescope uses a technique called aperture synthesis to simulate a giant telescope with an array of smaller telescopes. The techniques used to implement the hypertelescope and make sense of its data are interferometric techniques, measurement techniques that combine two or more data points to create a clearer pictur
