V. A. Vasyuk

Binary star speckle measurements at Calar Alto. I.

We present the first results of our speckle interferometric measurements of binary stars made with the ICCD speckle camera using the 1.52-m telescope of the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional at Calar Alto (Spain) in September, 1999. The data contain 123 observations of 83 systems. The measured angular separations range from 0. ′′153 to 6. ′′727. We have used there new speckle measurements to improve the orbital elements for the binaries COU 247 and BU 524 AB.

Speckle Interferometry Camera of the Astronomical Observatory R.M. Aller: The First Results

The main module of the camera contains a pair of interchangeable microscope objectives with the magnifications of 8× and 20×, which are necessary to sample the size of individual speckles to a detector’s pixel size of 13.4 pm. The detector system consists of a CCD camera with 1280(H)×1024(V) pixels of a 6.7×6.7 μm size, optically coupled to a 3-stage image intensifier. For faster readout we use the sampling of speckle images to 512×512 pixels while the dynamic range of the system is limited by the 12 bit digitization. Single photoelectron events are recorded by the system with a signal-to-noise ratio of about 30.