Intensity Interferometry is a form of imaging developed in the 1950’s by Hanbury Brown and Twiss, which gave very early results for estimates of the diameters of stellar discs. It relies on the statistical properties of light to form an image by correlating the electronic signals measured independently and simultaneously at two or more separate collection telescopes. Its benefits are that it can provide very high resolution, can be very low in cost, does not require precision path matching, and is insensitive to atmospheric effects. Its disadvantages are that it has relatively poor SNR properties for larger telescope separations. An experiment is performed with three telescopes in Kihei, HI to investigate the potential for large-separation, high-resolution, multi-telescope operation. Simulations were performed to address key issues related to the experiment. Correlations were measured during lab checkouts, and also for early field testing. A compression scheme was developed to archive the raw data. The compression process had the added advantage of eliminating spurious electronic interference signals.

Date Published: 15 October 2012
PDF: 17 pages
Proc. SPIE 8520, Unconventional Imaging and Wavefront Sensing 2012, 85200J (15 October 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.930537

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8520:
Unconventional Imaging and Wavefront Sensing 2012
Jean J. Dolne; Thomas J. Karr; Victor L. Gamiz, Editor(s)