Fringe tracking at VLTI: status report

Abstract

FINITO (the VLTI three beam fringe-tracker) has been offered in September 2007 to the astronomical community for observations with the scientific instruments AMBER and MIDI. In this paper, we describe the last improvements of the fringe-tracking loop and its actual performance when operating with the 1.8m Auxiliary Telescopes. We demonstrate the gain provided to the scientific observations. Finally, we discuss how FINITO real-time data could be used in post-processing to enhance the scientific return of the facility.