High-resolution astronomical imaging by triple correlation processing.
Abstract
The atmosphere of the earth restricts the resolution of conventional astrophotography to about 1 arcsec. Much higher resolution can be obtained by using speckle methods. The speckle masking method (triple correlation method) yields images of general astronomical objects with diffraction-limited resolution, for example, 0.03 arcsec resolution for a 3.6-m telescope. A 1-km telescope array on the earth would yield images with 10-4arcsec resolution. With a 40-km array in space a fantastic resolution of 10-6arcsec can be achieved at λ ≡200 nm. The author shows speckle masking observations of NGC 3603 and Eta Carinae and computer simulations of optical aperture synthesis.
- Publication:
-
Digital image recovery and synthesis
- Pub Date:
- January 1987
- Bibcode:
- 1987SPIE..828....8W
- Keywords:
-
- Astronomical Photography;
- Computerized Simulation;
- Image Reconstruction;
- Signal To Noise Ratios;
- Speckle Interferometry;
- Correlation;
- Faint Objects;
- Fourier Transformation;
- Transfer Functions;
- Astronomy;
- Aperture Synthesis;
- Speckle Interferometry