Automated Speckle Interferometry of Known Binaries

Nick Hardy; Leon Bewersdorff; David Rowe; Russell Genet; Rick Wasson; James Armstrong; Scott Dixon; Mark Harris; Tom Smith; Rachel Freed; Paul McCudden; S. Stephen Rajkumar Inbanathan; Marie Davis; Christopher Giavarini; Ronald Snyder; Roger Wholly; Maaike Calvin; Sumner Cotton; Julia Carter; Mario Terrazas; Shane Christopher R.; Arun Kumar A.; Sithara Naskath H.; Mariam Ronald Rabin A

arXiv · 2303.15011

Automated Speckle Interferometry of Known Binaries

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Abstract

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 observations of many known binaries with established orbits. The long-term objective of these observations is to establish the precision, accuracy, and limitations of this telescope's automated speckle interferometry measurements. This paper provides an early overview of the Known Binaries Project and provide example results on a small-separation (0.27") binary, WDS 12274-2843 B 228.

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Nick Hardy, Leon Bewersdorff, David Rowe, Russell Genet, Rick Wasson, James Armstrong, Scott Dixon, Mark Harris, Tom Smith, Rachel Freed, Paul McCudden, S. Stephen Rajkumar Inbanathan, Marie Davis, Christopher Giavarini, Ronald Snyder, Roger Wholly, Maaike Calvin, Sumner Cotton, Julia Carter, Mario Terrazas, Shane Christopher R., Arun Kumar A., Sithara Naskath H., Mariam Ronald Rabin A. 2023-03-27. Automated Speckle Interferometry of Known Binaries. https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.15011

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