EAS Publications Series

Issue		EAS Publications Series Volume 22, 2006 Astronomy with High Contrast Imaging III: Instrumental Techniques, Modeling and Data Processing
Page(s)		103 - 117
DOI		10.1051/eas:2006127
Published online		13 October 2006

Astronomy with High Contrast Imaging III: Instrumental Techniques, Modeling and Data Processing
M. Carbillet, A. Ferrari and C. Aime (eds)
EAS Publications Series, 22 (2006) 103-117
DOI: 10.1051/eas:2006127

IRAN: Interferometric Remapped Array Nulling

E. Aristidi¹, F. Vakili¹, A. Schutz¹, H. Lanteri¹, L. Abe¹, A. Belu¹, P.M. Gori¹, O. Lardière², B. Lopez³, J.L. Menut³ and F. Patru³

¹ LUAN, Université de Nice, Parc Valrose, 06108 Nice Cedex 2, France
² Observatoire de Haute Provence, France
³ Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, France

(Published online 13 October 2006)

Abstract
IRAN is a method of beam-combination in the hypertelescope imaging technique recently introduced by Labeyrie in optical interferometry. We propose to observe the interferometric image in the pupil plane, performing multi-axial pupil plane interferometry. Imaging is performed in a combined pupil-plane where the point-source intensity distribution (PSID) tends towards a pseudo Airy disc for a sufficiently large number of telescopes. The image is concentrated into the limited support of the output pupil of the individual telescopes, in which the object-image convolution relation is conserved. Specific deconvolution algorithms have been developped for IRAN hypertelescope imagery, based upon Lucy-like iterative techniques. We show that the classical (image plane) and IRAN (pupil plane) hypertelescope imaging techniques are equivalent if one uses optical fibers for beam transportation. An application to the VLT/VIDA concept is presented.

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