Several factors make observational astronomy difficult for astronomers; one of them is the atmosphere. The light that a star emits is refracted when it goes through the earth's atmosphere; the result of this is that the image of a punctual star is not what the physics would lead us to expect. At the Instituto de Astronomia of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (IA-UNAM) an instrument has been developed called "Berkut", which uses a high resolution technique to improve these effects and obtain interesting and valuable scientific studies. In this paper we present the mechanical reengineering and acceptance test of Berkut. This instrument was design for taking images of high resolution. Essentially, it is composed by a set basic optics which is aligned and in focus with a 1- meter class telescope. It has its own electronic components for controlling remotely a filter wheel; that allows the exchange of the filters according to the requirements of the observer, a couple of objectives mounted in a translation stage, and a CCD camera for acquiring several images per second that are used in the speckle interferometry technique. A project like Berkut needs to be multidisciplinary; astronomy, engineering, optics, mechanics, electronics, and image processing are some of the areas of knowledge used. Berkut will be used in the telescope of the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional in Tonantzintla, located in the state of Puebla, Mexico, but it can be used in any telescope 1 meter class. It is pretended to build another Berkuts for being used simultaneously in different telescopes, so it is important to keep the costs as low as possible. With this instrument we pretend to confirm the Hipparcos catalogue of binary stars besides finding exoplanets.

Date Published: 8 July 2014
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9147, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V, 91473T (8 July 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2057005

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9147:
Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V
Suzanne K. Ramsay; Ian S. McLean; Hideki Takami, Editor(s)