GIANT INFRARED TELESCOPES FOR ASTRONOMY: A SCIENTIFIC RATIONALE

In this paper we develop scientific criteria for choosing the dimensions of an interferometric array of telescopes to be used in the infrared. The ideal array consists of small collecting apertures which are either few in number, widely spaced and easily moved to new baselines or many in number, closely spaced and on fixed baselines. The proposed and planned "next-generation" of ground-based telescopes are found to be inadequate to solve the interesting problems of infrared astronomy which require high spatial resolution. Arrays consisting of telescopes with individual apertures larger than the atmospheric correlation length are probably not workable and certainly not cost effective.