Speckle Interferometry

Extract

Speckle interferometry is a technique which utilizes the full diffraction-limited imaging potential of ground-based telescopes. Short exposure images, or specklegrams, with an exposure time less than that of the atmospheric correlation time (~5- 50 ms) preserve the high-spatial frequency information lost in long exposure imaging. In 1970, Labeyrie computed the power spectrum of a set of specklegrams and showed that they contained diffraction-limited information. Since then the field has grown with improvements in both instrumentation and the phase recovery algorithms necessary for imaging. It has been applied at both visible and near-infrared wavelengths although, until recently, the latter has used slit-scanning techniques with single pixel detectors because of the lack of array detectors. The current state of speckle interferometry has been well covered in the proceedings of two recent joint National Optical Astronomy Observatories – European Southern Observatory workshops on Interferometric Imaging in Astronomy (Oracle, 1987 & Garching, 1988).