Stellar Angular Diameters of Late-Type Giants and Supergiants Measured with the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer

Abstract

We have measured the angular diameters of 50 F, G, K, and M giant and supergiant stars using the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer at wavelengths between 649 and 850 nm and using three baselines with lengths up to 37.5 m. Uniform-disk diameters, obtained from fits to the visibility amplitude, were transformed to limb-darkened diameters through the use of limb-darkening coefficients for plane-parallel stellar atmosphere models. These limb-darkened diameters are compared with those measured with the Mark III optical interferometer and with those computed by the infrared flux method. Sources of random and systematic error in the observations are discussed.