Lucky Imaging: High Angular Resolution Imaging in the Visible from the Ground
Abstract
We use a Lucky Imaging system to obtain I-band images with much improved angular resolution on a ground-based 2.5m telescope. We present results from a 10-night assessment campaign on the 2.56m Nordic Optical Telescope and quantify the performance of our system in seeings better than 1.0''. In good seeing we have acquired near diffraction-limited images; in poorer seeing the angular resolution has been routinely improved by factors of 2.5-4. The system can use guide stars as faint as I=16 with full performance and its useful field of view is consistently larger than 40" diameter. The technique shows promise for a number of science programmes, both galactic (eg. binary candidates, brown dwarfs, globular cluster cores) and extragalactic (eg. quasar host galaxies, damped Lyman-alpha absorbers).
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0507299,
title = {Lucky Imaging: High Angular Resolution Imaging in the Visible from the Ground},
author = {Nicholas M. Law and Craig D. Mackay and John E. Baldwin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0507299},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
7 pages, 10 figures, submitted to A&A. For further information, see http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~optics/Lucky_Web_Site/