High-resolution Astronomical Observations Research Articles

Orbital configurations of spaceborne interferometers for studying photon rings of supermassive black holes

Recent advances in technology coupled with the progress of observational radio astronomy methods resulted in achieving a major milestone of astrophysics - a direct image of the shadow of a supermassive black hole, taken by the Earth-based Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The EHT was able to achieve a resolution of ∼20μas, enabling it to resolve the shadows of the black holes in the centres of two celestial objects: the supergiant elliptical galaxy M87 and the Milky Way Galaxy. The EHT results mark the start of a new round of development of next generation Very Long Baseline Interferometers (VLBI) which will be able to operate at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths. The inclusion of baselines exceeding the diameter of the Earth and observation at as short a wavelength as possible is imperative for further development of high resolution astronomical observations. This can be achieved by a spaceborne VLBI system. We consider the preliminary mission design of such a system, specifically focused on the detection and analysis of photon rings, an intrinsic feature of supermassive black holes. Optimised Earth, Sun–Earth L2 and Earth–Moon L2 orbit configurations for the space interferometer system are presented, all of which provide an order of magnitude improvement in resolution compared to the EHT. Such a space-borne interferometer would be able to conduct a comprehensive survey of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei and enable uniquely robust and accurate tests of strong gravity, through detection of the photon ring features.

Multiframe Correction Blind Deconvolution for Solar Image Restoration

A series of short-exposure images are often used for rich, small-scale structure, high-quality, and high-resolution astronomical observations. Postprocessing of the closed-loop adaptive optics (AO) image using ground-based astronomical telescopes plays an important role in astronomical observations due to it further improving image quality after AO processing. These images show several main characteristics: random spatial variation blur kernel, unclear model after AO correction, unclear physical characteristics of observation objects, etc. Our goal is to propose a multiframe correction blind deconvolution (MFCBD) algorithm to restore AO closed-loop solar images. MFCBD introduces a denoiser and corrector to help estimate the intermediate latent image and proposes using an L q norm of the kernel as the sparse constraint to acquire a compact blur kernel. MFCBD also uses the half-quadratic splitting strategy to optimize the objective function, which makes the algorithm not only simple to solve, but also easy to adapt to different fidelity terms and prior terms. In tests on three data sets observed from the photosphere and chromosphere of the Sun, MFCBD not only restored clearer and more detailed images, but also converged smoothly and monotonically in terms of the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity (SSIM) after a few iterations. Taking the speckle-reconstructed image as a reference, the clear image restored by our method performs best both in PSNR and SSIM compared with the state-of-the-art traditional methods OBD and BATUD.

Design and experimental demonstration of pointing correction module for a Fizeau imaging interferometer.

To increase the spatial resolution while circumventing the problems of increased mass and volume of monolithic telescopes, a Fizeau imaging interferometer testbed (FIIT) with three individual subtelescopes was designed and constructed for high resolution astronomical observation. FIIT is intended to be mounted on a distributed small-satellite constellation with a formation fly configuration; thus the extremely stable pointing of the subtelescopes is the prerequisite for phased imaging, which is because the satellite suffers from some extent of detrimental jitters and drifts needs to be corrected by FIIT itself. FIIT makes use of a shared tip/tilt detection module with a cross-correlation algorithm, three fast-steering mirrors, and closed-loop control technology for pointing correction of three subtelescopes, which can make sure the images are coaligned for a long period of time used to image some faint astronomical objects. This study gives a detailed description of the detection algorithm of image shifts, the hardware design, and data processing flow, followed by closed-loop experiments of a wide-band white light point source. The results of residual errors on the detection camera and the beam-combining camera demonstrate the performance of the pointing correction function, which is a significant milestone for FIIT.

Advancement of adaptive optics in astronomical observation

Adaptive optics is used to compensate the atmospheric turbulence aberration for diffractive limit images, which makes the angular resolution of large aperture telescope not limited by the seeing or atmospheric coherence length. The continuous improvements of wavefront sensing, correctors and enlarged FOV for adaptive optics accelerate the development of astronomy. The main adaptive optics techniques include classical FOV and high resolution astronomical observation, extro-planet observation and solar observations and so on. And they have different technique requirements for adaptive optics. In the paper, we give some summarization and expectation of the advancement in the above three fields, especially in some new elemental techniques in detail, which will be helpful for our national adaptive optics development in large aperture telescopes.

Rotational spectroscopy of vibrationally excited N2H+ and N2D+ up to 2.7 THz

Terahertz absorption spectroscopy was employed to extend the measurements on the pure rotational transitions of N2H+, N2D+ and their 15N-containing isotopologues in the ground state and first excited vibrational states for the three fundamental vibrational modes. In total, 91 new pure rotational transitions were observed in the range of 0.7–2.7THz. The observed transition frequencies were fit to experimental accuracy, and the improved molecular parameters were obtained. The new measurements and predictions reported here will support the analysis of high-resolution astronomical observations made with facilities such as SOFIA and ALMA where laboratory rest frequencies with uncertainties of 1MHz or smaller are required for proper analysis of velocity resolved astrophysical components.

Highly accurate potential energy surface, dipole moment surface, rovibrational energy levels, and infrared line list for 32S16O2 up to 8000 cm−1

A purely ab initio potential energy surface (PES) was refined with selected (32)S(16)O2 HITRAN data. Compared to HITRAN, the root-mean-squares error (σ(RMS)) for all J = 0-80 rovibrational energy levels computed on the refined PES (denoted Ames-1) is 0.013 cm(-1). Combined with a CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pV(Q+d)Z dipole moment surface (DMS), an infrared (IR) line list (denoted Ames-296K) has been computed at 296 K and covers up to 8000 cm(-1). Compared to the HITRAN and CDMS databases, the intensity agreement for most vibrational bands is better than 85%-90%. Our predictions for (34)S(16)O2 band origins, higher energy (32)S(16)O2 band origins and missing (32)S(16)O2 IR bands have been verified by most recent experiments and available HITRAN data. We conclude that the Ames-1 PES is able to predict (32/34)S(16)O2 band origins below 5500 cm(-1) with 0.01-0.03 cm(-1) uncertainties, and the Ames-296K line list provides continuous, reliable and accurate IR simulations. The K(a)-dependence of both line position and line intensity errors is discussed. The line list will greatly facilitate SO2 IR spectral experimental analysis, as well as elimination of SO2 lines in high-resolution astronomical observations.

Accurate ab initio quartic force fields of cyclic and bent HC2N isomers

Highly correlated ab initio quartic force fields (QFFs) are used to calculate the equilibrium structures and predict the spectroscopic parameters of three HC(2)N isomers. Specifically, the ground state quasilinear triplet and the lowest cyclic and bent singlet isomers are included in the present study. Extensive treatment of correlation effects were included using the singles and doubles coupled-cluster method that includes a perturbational estimate of the effects of connected triple excitations, denoted as CCSD(T). Dunning's correlation-consistent basis sets cc-pVXZ, X = 3,4,5, were used, and a three-point formula for extrapolation to the one-particle basis set limit was used. Core-correlation and scalar relativistic corrections were also included to yield highly accurate QFFs. The QFFs were used together with second-order perturbation theory (PT) (with proper treatment of Fermi resonances) and variational methods to solve the nuclear Schrödinger equation. The quasilinear nature of the triplet isomer is problematic, and it is concluded that a QFF is not adequate to describe properly all of the fundamental vibrational frequencies and spectroscopic constants (though some constants not dependent on the bending motion are well reproduced by PT). On the other hand, this procedure (a QFF together with either PT or variational methods) leads to highly accurate fundamental vibrational frequencies and spectroscopic constants for the cyclic and bent singlet isomers of HC(2)N. All three isomers possess significant dipole moments, 3.05 D, 3.06 D, and 1.71 D, for the quasilinear triplet, the cyclic singlet, and the bent singlet isomers, respectively. It is concluded that the spectroscopic constants determined for the cyclic and bent singlet isomers are the most accurate available, and it is hoped that these will be useful in the interpretation of high-resolution astronomical observations or laboratory experiments.

The ALFA medium explorer mission

Abstract The frequency range below a few tens of MHz is unexplored with high angular resolution due to the opacity of Earth's ionosphere. An interferometer array in space providing arcminute angular resolution images at frequencies of a few MHz would allow a wide range of problems in solar, planetary, galactic, and extragalactic astronomy to be attacked. These include the evolution of solar radio emissions associated with shocks driven by coronal mass ejections and searches for coherent radio emission from supernova remnants and relativistic jets. In addition, it is likely that unexpected objects or emission processes will be discovered by such an instrument, as has always happened when high resolution astronomical observations first become possible in a new region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Astronomical Low Frequency Array (ALFA) mission will consist of 16 identical small satellites forming an aperture synthesis array. The satellites will cover the surface of a spherical region ≈ 100 km in diameter, thus providing good aperture plane coverage in all directions simultaneously. The array will operate in two medes: 1) “snapshot” imaging of strong, rapidly changing sources such as solar radio bursts and 2) long-term aperture synthesis observations for maximum sensitivity, high dynamic range imaging. In both cases a large number of array elements is needed.

Balloon-borne radiosonde for the measurement of the atmospheric thermal structure coefficient

The characteristics and operational limits of a balloon-borne radiosonde working up to 20 000 m for the measurement of the atmospheric thermal structure coefficient CT2 are described. The knowledge of CT2 profile up to 20 000 m gives information about the optical quality of the atmosphere with respect to high resolution astronomical observations. The radiosondes were launched during a research campaign carried out at Tenerife, Canary Islands in connection with the European JOSO (Joint Organisation for Solar Observations) project.