Since 2007, close binary and multiple stars are observed by speckle interferometry at the 4.1 m Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope. The HRCam instrument, observing strategy and planning, data processing and calibration methods, developed and improved during ten years, are presented here in a concise way. Thousands of binary stars were measured with diffraction-limited resolution (29mas at 540nm wavelength) and a high accuracy reaching 1mas; two hundred new pairs or subsystems were discovered. To date, HRCam has performed over 11000 observations with a high efficiency (up to 300 stars per night). An overview of the main results delivered by this instrument is given.
Observations of Binary Stars with the 1.3-m Devasthal Fast Optical Telescope Using Speckle Interferometry: An Attempt
Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences（阿亚巴塔观测科学研究所）；School of Applied Sciences, Centurion University of Technology and Management（中央技术与管理大学应用科学学院）；Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics（跨大学天文学与天体物理学中心）；Physik-Institut, University of Zurich（苏黎世大学物理学院）
We present results from Speckle inteferometric observations of fifteen visual binaries and one double-line spectroscopic binary, carried out with the HRCam Speckle camera of the SOAR 4.1 m telescope. These systems were observed as a part of an on-going survey to characterize the binary population in the solar vicinity, out to a distance of 250 parsec. We obtained orbital elements and mass sums for our sample of visual binaries. The orbits were computed using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm that delivers maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters, as well as posterior probability densi…
Astronomers have been measuring the separations and position angles between the two components of binary stars since William Herschel began his observations in 1781. In 1970, Anton Labeyrie pioneered a method, speckle interferometry, that overcomes the usual resolution limits induced by atmospheric turbulence by taking hundreds or thousands of short exposures and reducing them in Fourier space. Our 2022 automation of speckle interferometry allowed us to use a fully robotic 1.0-meter PlaneWave Instruments telescope, located at the El Sauce Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile, to obtain o…
The orbits of 8 systems with low-mass components (HIP 14524, HIP 16025, HIP 28671, HIP 46199, HIP 47791, HIP 60444, HIP 61100 and HIP 73085) are presented. Speckle interferometric data were obtained at the 6 m Big Alt-azimuth Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences (BTA SAO RAS) from 2007 to 2019. New data, together with measures already in the literature, made it possible to improve upon previous orbital solutions in six cases and to construct orbits for the first time in the two remaining cases (HIP 14524 and HIP 60444). Mass sums are obtained using both Hipparco…
Suppressing the interference of atmospheric turbulence and obtaining observation data with a high spatial resolution is an issue to be solved urgently for ground observations. One way to solve this problem is to perform a statistical reconstruction of short-exposure speckle images. Combining the rapidity of Shift-Add and the accuracy of speckle masking, this paper proposes a novel reconstruction algorithm-NASIR (Non-rigid Alignment based Solar Image Reconstruction). NASIR reconstructs the phase of the object image at each frequency by building a computational model between geometric distortion…
Starting in 2008, NASA has provided the exoplanet community an observational program aimed at obtaining the highest resolution imaging available as part of its mission to validate and characterize exoplanets, as well as their stellar environments, in search of life in the universe. Our current program uses speckle interferometry in the optical (320-1000 nm) with new instruments on the 3.5-m WIYN and both 8-m Gemini telescopes. Starting with Kepler and K2 follow-up, we now support TESS and other space- and ground-based exoplanet related discovery and characterization projects. The importance of…
Michelson phase and Hanbury Brown-Twiss intensity stellar interferometry require expressions for the first- and second-order correlation functions, respectively, of the fields radiated by stars in terms of their diameters and measured quasi-monochromatic wavelengths. Although our sun and most other stars are spherical in shape at optical wavelengths, previous determinations of speckle and correlation functions have modeled stars as circular discs rather than spheres because of the mathematical tools available for partially coherent fields on planar surfaces. However, with the incentive that mo…
(Abbreviated) Kepler planet candidates require both spectroscopic and imaging follow-up observations to rule out false positives and detect blended stars. [...] In this paper, we examine a sample of 11 Kepler host stars with companions detected by two techniques -- near-infrared adaptive optics and/or optical speckle interferometry imaging, and a new spectroscopic deblending method. We compare the companion Teff and flux ratios (F_B/F_A, where A is the primary and B is the companion) derived from each technique, and find no cases where both companion parameters agree within 1sigma errors. In 3…
