Publications
of the
MPIfR
Optical & Infrared
Interferometry Group
F. Przygodda, T. Blöcker, K.-H.
Hofmann, and G. Weigelt:
Computer simulations of interferometric
imaging with the VLT interferometer and its AMBER instrument
Optical Engineering 40, 753-760 (2001)
Abstract.
We present computer simulations of interferometric imaging with the
Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI)
of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Astronomical
MultiBEam Recombiner (AMBER) phase-closure instrument.
These simulations include both the
astrophysical modelling of a stellar object by radiative transfer
calculations and the simulation of light propagation from the object to
the
detector (through atmosphere, telescopes, and the AMBER instrument),
simulation of photon noise and detector read-out noise, and finally
data
processing of the interferograms. The results show the dependence of
the
visibility error bars on the following observational parameters:
different seeing during the observation of
object and reference star
(Fried parameters r0,object and r0,ref
ranging between 0.9m and 1.2m),
different residual tip-tilt error
(deltatt,object and deltatt,ref ranging between
0.1% and 20% of the Airy disk diameter),
and object brightness (Kobject=0.7mag to 10.2mag,
Kref=0.7mag).
Exemplarily, we
focus on stars in late stages of stellar evolution and study one of its
key objects, the dusty supergiant IRC+10420 that is rapidly evolving on
human timescales.
We show computer simulations of VLT interferometry
(visibility and phase closure measurements)
of IRC+10420 with
two and three Auxiliary Telescopes
(ATs; AMBER wide-field mode, i.e.\ without fiber optics spatial
filters)
and discuss whether the visibility accuracy is
sufficient to distinguish between different theoretical model
predictions.
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