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Studying Earth by looking at starsAtlanta professor develops advanced astronomy technology
 CHARA explores the universe through an array of advanced astronomy technology. SPECIAL REPORT
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YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Imagine being able to see something the size of a nickel from 10,000 miles away. Hal McAlister developed the tools to do just that. In 1984, the professor of physics and astronomy at Georgia State University founded CHARA, or the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy. He now directs the program, studying stars with some of the most advanced astronomy technology in the world that links multiple telescopes together. "I've always wanted to be an astronomer," McAlister said. And growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, McAlister found it easy to reach for the stars. He lived close to the University of Tennessee's Clarence T. Jones Observatory, and while other kids his age were playing ball, young Hal started hanging out there Friday nights when the observatory was open to the public. "By the time I was in the fourth grade, I knew I was going to be an astronomer and just never thought I'd be anything else," he said. (Watch reaching for the stars: 0:51) The CHARA telescopes, on top of Mount Wilson in southern California, are among a handful of the most powerful in the world. CHARA links six independent 40-inch telescopes as if they were one powerful telescope, spanning a thousand feet across. The high-altitude Mount Wilson provides atmospheric clarity not possible in Atlanta, Georgia, where McAlister lives with his family. The array of telescopes allows scientists to study bright stars with a degree of detail that would otherwise be possible only with one enormous instrument. "There's no way in the world that we could design or build or even afford to build a single telescope a thousand feet across," he said. While the telescopes star gaze in California, McAlister and his staff of mostly graduate students work across the country in Atlanta. He is able to remain "intensely" involved in the telescope activity on the West coast through the Internet, and he travels to California about every six weeks. A typical day? Coffee in right hand, each morning McAlister checks the previous night's observations to make sure they were clear and spends the day analyzing their data. What does he see? The telescopes let astronomers zoom in on the universe to cull detailed, specific data on each star -- just like you might find on a driver's license. "If you think of stars as humans ... the things that would be listed on a star's driver's license, instead of hair color and height, would be the star's mass, diameter, surface temperature, the amount of energy it puts out, and its distance from us in space," McAlister said. The data will help scientists better form their theory of stars. Scientists also hope to more fully understand how the sun compares to the whole family of stars. CHARA telescopes helped glean new clarity on the star Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo. McAlister and a team of scientists announced in early 2005 that they were able to gain accurate measurements of the bullet-shaped star's size and temperature, determining the star is nearly 350 times more luminous than the sun in our solar system. McAlister and his team hope their work inspires people to become excited about the universe of stars, and to learn what they are really about. "I like to talk to people about astronomy," McAlister said. "A lot of people feel a bit insecure about science like this, and when they really get comfortable hearing about what we're doing, they're fascinated." He added, "By learning more about the stars, we learn more about our own star and really what gives us here life on Earth." 
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