By combining the light from two telescopes set 330 meters apart, the CHARA array, as it is known, has become the world's largest optical interferometer. By comparison, the largest conventional optical telescopes do not exceed 36 feet (11 meters) in diameter.

The milestone, reported as imminent this summer by SPACE.com, is an important step in the array's ability to begin doing real science. And it advances the field of interferometry, currently dominated by arrays working in the radio wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The optical array will eventually consist of six telescopes, each with a light-collecting mirror that is 1 meter in diameter (3 feet). Since 1999, two of the telescopes have been working, but useful observations require the third, which is now online. All six should be operational by early next year, refining accuracy and allowing for quicker observations.

CHARA (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy) is operated by Georgia State University.

"To us, its like a successful anti-ballistic missile test when you finally hit that target way out over the Pacific," Harold McAlister, CHARAs director and a Georgia State University astronomer, said in a prepared statement.

Interferometry is a complex method of combining light from two or more telescopes at a central location equidistant from each telescope. The combined light, while not typically generating traditional images, provides data known as "fringes" that allow researchers to discern the dimensions of distant objects with greater resolve than traditional telescopes.

CHARA scientists say they'll be able to see things with 300,000 times the resolution of the human eye and more than 50 times better than the Hubble Space Telescope, at least for bright objects.

At a time when many telescopes are devoted to studying distant galaxies or exotic objects like black holes and neutron stars, CHARA's managers expect the interferometer to stand out as one of the most powerful telescopes devoted to the study of regular old stars.

CHARA is expected to allow astronomers to measure and weigh stars, including pairs of stars known as binaries, and calculate distances to them with a precision not previously possible.

On Thursday, Sept. 20, a team of CHARA scientists led by Theo ten Brummelaar succeeded in detecting "interference fringes" from starlight collected by the two most-separated telescopes of the array.

In order to produce interference fringes, the beams of light must be brought together in matched path lengths with a precision of one ten-thousandth of an inch after traveling from the collecting telescopes over total paths of nearly three-tenths of a mile.

Click here to learn more about the CHARA array.