Direct imaging with highly diluted apertures. I. Field of view limitations

Abstract

Future optical interferometric instrumentation mainly relies on the availability of an efficient cophasing system: once available, what has so far postponed the relevance of direct imaging with an interferometer will vanish. This paper focuses on the actual limits of snapshot imaging, inherent to the use of a sparse aperture: the number of telescopes and the geometry of the array impose the maximum extent of the field of view and the complexity of the sources. A second limitation may arise from the beam combination scheme. Comparing already available solutions, we show that the so called hypertelescope mode (or densified pupil) is ideal. By adjusting the direct imaging field of view to the useful field of view offered by the array, the hypertelescope makes an optimal use of the collected photons. It optimizes signal to noise ratio, drastically improves the luminosity of images and makes the interferometer compatible with coronagraphy, without inducing any loss of useful field of view.

13 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Full-resolution version available at http://www.obs-hp.fr/~lardiere/publi/2006-Lardiere-MNRAS.pdf

References in corpus (5)

• A dusty pinwheel nebula around the massive star WR 104
• Multifrequency VLA radio observations of the X-ray cavity cluster of galaxies RBS797: evidence of differently oriented jets
• First images on the sky from a hyper telescope
• A Nulling Wide Field Imager for Exoplanets Detection and General Astrophysics
• Observing the Seyfert 2 nucleus of NGC 1068 with the VLT Interferometer

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