Speckle Interferometry and Image Reconstruction

Abstract

AbstractThe angular resolution of conventional astrophotography is limited to about 1 sec of arc due to image degradation by the atmosphere and telescope aberrations. Higher resolution can be achieved by Labeyrie's speckle interferometry, which yields the autocorrelation of astronomical objects with diffraction-limited resolution, e.g. 0.02 sec of arc with 5m telescope aperture.We have investigated modifications of speckle interferometry, which yield diffraction-limited images. We investigated (1) “speckle holography” for image reconstruction of objects near an unresolvable point source (reference star), (2) “speckle masking” for image reconstruction of binary stars (without a reference star), and (3) “phase flipping” for image reconstruction of centro-symmetric objects. Together these three image reconstruction methods represent a set of speckle evaluation procedures, which can yield high resolution images of most astronomical objects that are bright enough for speckle interferometry. Speckle holography was already applied to astronomical objects. We reconstructed real images of the binary star Zeta Cancri A-B and the triple star ADS 3358 A-B-C ( 0.07 sec of arc resolution with 1.8m telescope aperture).