Infrared speckle imaging: Data reduction with application to binary stars

The extended Knox-Thompson reduction scheme currently in use at Kitt Peak National Observatory and Steward Observatory for the reduction of infrared speckle interferometry is described in detail. Applications of this algorithm and the less computationally intensive shift-and-add analysis to both simulated and real binary star data is presented demonstrating that the latter may be successfully used for image reconstruction by using a separately measured point source. The performance of both techniques is shown to improve by application of an iterative deconvolution algorithm to apply a priori image constraints without degradation of photometric information.Operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. (AURA) under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation