New observational techniques and analysis tools for wide field CCD surveys and high resolution astrometry
Abstract
(Abridged) In the first part of this thesis, a general methodology for applying image deconvolution to wide-field CCD imagery. Results show that wavelet-based deconvolution can increase limiting magnitude up to 0.6 mag and improve limiting resolution 1 pixel with respect to original image with no astrometric accuracy degradation. In the second part, a new observational technique based on CCD fast drift scanning has been proposed for lunar occultations (LO) and speckle interferometry. This enables all kind of professional and high-end amateur observatories to perform such kind of observations. For LO, 16 new binaries up to 2mas of projected separation were detected and stellar diameters measurements in the 7 mas regime were obtained with that CCD and IR subarray based techniques. A new wavelet-based LO reduction pipeline was implemented. For speckle, CCD fast drift scanning technique was validated with the observation of four binary systems with well determined orbits. The results of separation, position angle and magnitude difference are in accordance with published measurements. A new approach for calibrating speckle transfer function from the binary power spectrum itself has been introduced. It does not require point source observations, which gives a more effective use of observation time.
- Publication:
-
Ph.D. Thesis
- Pub Date:
- April 2006
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0604150
- Bibcode:
- 2006PhDT.........9F
- Keywords:
-
- methods: data analysis;
- techniques: deconvolution;
- wavelets;
- instrumentation: drift scanning;
- occultations;
- techniques: interferometric;
- techniques: high angular resolution;
- binaries: close;
- binaries: visual;
- Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- This is the abstract of my PhD Thesis at University of Barcelona. Abridged and complete summary available from astro-ph. Full thesis (22Mb) in separate chapters and with a summary in Catalan is available from: http://www.tesisenxarxa.net/TDX-0330106-125745/index_an.html