Application of fast CCD drift scanning to speckle imaging of binary stars

Abstract

A new application of a fast CCD drift scanning technique that allows us to perform speckle imaging of binary stars is presented. For each observation, an arbitrary number of speckle frames is periodically stored on a computer disk, each with an appropriate exposure time given both atmospheric and instrumental considerations. The CCD charge is shifted towards the serial register and read out sufficiently rapidly to avoid an excessive amount of interframe dead time. Four well-known binary systems (ADS 755, ADS 2616, ADS 3711 and ADS 16836) are observed in to show the feasibility of the proposed technique. Bispectral data analysis and power spectrum fitting is carried out for each observation, yielding relative astrometry and photometry. A new approach for self-calibrating this analysis is also presented and validated. The proposed scheme does not require any additional electronic or optical hardware, so it should allow most small professional observatories and advanced amateurs to enjoy the benefits of diffraction-limited imaging.