Felix Bosco

PhD Student

SOWAT: Speckle Observations with alleviated Turbulence

Adaptive Optics

Current Research Summary:

As part of the SOWAT project, we simulate residual wave fronts and point spread functions (PSFs) for a variety of AO system designs and use the Yorick Adaptive Optics simulation tool ’YAO’. Our aim is to analyze the benefit of using AO corrections for (advanced) speckle imaging techniques, with focus on 8m-class telescopes. To study this, we use the simulated short-exposure PSFs to create synthetic observations of artificial clusters including the noise components and reduce them with the Holographic Imaging Pipeline of Rainer Schodel (Schodel et al., 2013), which is an elaborate speckle imaging technique using 100% of the data. The holographic image reconstruction of the ground-layer-reduced observational data allows for diffraction-limited astrometry and a photometry comparable to or better than traditional speckle imaging techniques. The analysis of the residual wave front, the synthetic observations and the holographic reconstruction are summarized in a paper draft, which is submitted to PASP already - stay tuned!

Prior Research:

2015-2017 High-mass star formation with NOEMA interferometer.
2014 Characterization of the motion of suspended mirrors ('test masses') of gravitational wave detectors