Improving Imaging through Turbulence Via Aperture Partitioning
Abstract
Speckle imaging techniques make it possible to do high-resolution imaging through the turbulent atmosphere by collecting and processing a large number of short-exposure frames, each of which effectively freezes the atmosphere. In severe seeing condition, when the characteristic scale of atmospheric fluctuations is much smaller than the diameter of the telescope, the reconstructed image is dominated by ?turbulence noise? caused by redundant baselines in the pupil. I describe a generalization of aperture masking interferometery that dramatically improves imaging performance in this regime. The approach is to partition the aperture into annuli, form the bispectra of the focal plane images formed from each annulus, and recombine them into a synthesized bispectrum form which the object may be retrieved. This may be implemented using multiple cameras and special mirrors, or with a single camera and a suitable pupil phase mask. I report results from simulations as well as experimental results using telescopes at the Air Force Research Lab's Maui Space Surveillance Site.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 09, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA532391
Entities
People
- Brandoch Calef
Organizations
- Boeing