Abstract

We discuss a recently developed technique to recover nearly diffraction-limited images of supergiant stars such as α Orionis (Betelgeuse) from speckle interferometry data. This method relies on the digital identification and coaddition of the brightest individual speckles within a large number of short-exposure speckle photographs. The resulting average speckle may be thought of as the convolution of a point source speckle profile with the actual object intensity pattern. By making use of this point we have derived angular diameters and limb darkening coefficients in addition to finding evidence of possible surface structure on the star. The limitations of this technique have been determined empirically and they are discussed in this paper.

© 1976 Optical Society of America

Speckle interferometry on the 2.5 m Isaac Newton telescope

D. R. Beddoes, J. C. Dainty, B. L. Morgan, and R. J. Scaddan
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(11) 1247-1251 (1976)

Image retrieval from astronomical speckle patterns*

Keith T. Knox
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(11) 1236-1239 (1976)

Interference in astronomical speckle patterns

James B. Breckinridge
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(11) 1240-1242 (1976)

Computer simulation of a method for object reconstruction from stellar speckle interferometry data

John G. Walker
Appl. Opt. 21(17) 3132-3137 (1982)

Measurements of atmospheric isoplanatism using speckle interferometry*

P. Nisenson and R. V. Stachnik
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 68(2) 169-175 (1978)