| Name: | Nikitha Jithendran |
| Affiliation: | Physical Research Laboratory |
| Conference ID: | ASI2025_630 |
| Title: | Speckle Interferometry with speckle imager on PRL 2.5m telescope |
| Authors: | Nikitha Jithendran 1, Kevikumar Lad 1, Neelam JSSV Prasad 1, Rishikesh Sharma 1, Nafees Ahmed 1, Akanksha Khandelwal 1, Kapil Bharadwaj 1, Vivek Mishra 1, Ashirbad Nayak 1, Abhijit Chakraborty 1 |
| Authors Affiliation: | 1 Physical Research Laboratory |
| Mode of Presentation: | Poster |
| Abstract Category: | Facilities, Technologies and Data science |
| Abstract: | Speckle imaging is a powerful technique to achieve near-diffraction-limited imaging with ground-based telescopes, overcoming the atmospheric distortions that degrade image quality due to air turbulence. By capturing very short exposures (2-10 ms) when the atmosphere is relatively stable, we can reduce the effects of turbulence and, through cumulative co-adding, achieve high-resolution images close to the diffraction limit of the telescope. Integrating speckle imaging with radial velocity (RV) measurements further enhances the study of exoplanet candidates and stellar systems by disentangling signals from planets and stellar companions, leading to more accurate characterizations of these systems.
We have designed and developed a speckle imager specifically for the PRL 2.5m telescope at the Mount Abu Observatory, Gurushikhar, Rajasthan. Installed on side port-1 of the telescope, this speckle imager provides a field of view (FOV) of 1.5' x 2.0' and supports exposure times of 2-50 ms in the fixed V-band. It can resolve stars as close as 0.3-0.4 arcseconds. A custom Python-based data reduction pipeline has been developed for analyzing speckle interferometric data.
This instrument has already been used for speckle interferometric studies of exoplanet host stars, including TOI-6651b, the first exoplanet discovered using PARAS-2 on the PRL 2.5m telescope, and other discoveries that are already in the pipeline. It has also been successfully applied in resolving close binary systems.
In this presentation, I will provide an overview of the speckle imager, describe the data reduction and analysis pipeline, and discuss our initial results.
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