[net.space] Blurring of Starlight, Interferometry

dietz%usc-cse@USC-ECL (12/25/82)

An interesting fact about atmospheric blurring of starlight is that,
over short periods of time (fractions of seconds to seconds) and small
angular separations (fractions of degrees) it is highly correlated.  A
new technique is to take snapshots of the object you're viewing every,
say, 1/50 of a second.  The results can be adjusted and stacked by
computer.  I'm not sure of the details (where does phase information
go?).  This technique is called "speckle interferometry" because of the
appearance of the resulting image.  The've used this technique to
separate Pluto and Charon, and to image Betelgeuse's (sp?) stellar
disk.