In 2004, our group proposed IRAN, an alternative beam-combination technique to the so-called hypertelescope imaging method introduced by Labeyrie in the 1990s. We have recently set up a laboratory experiment aiming at validating our image densification approach instead of the pupil densification scheme of Labeyrie. In our experiment, seven sub-apertures illuminated by laser sources are recombined using the IRAN scheme. The validation of the IRAN recombination consists basically in retrieving the point-spread intensity distribution (PSID), demonstrating the conservation of the object-image convolution relation. We will introduce IRAN, compare it to the hyper-telescope, and present the experimental results that we obtained.

Date Published: 28 July 2008
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 7013, Optical and Infrared Interferometry, 70133T (28 July 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.788680

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7013:
Optical and Infrared Interferometry
Markus Schöller; William C. Danchi; Françoise Delplancke, Editor(s)