| Abstract: | The applicability of the technique of speckle interferometry to the problem of detecting faint planetary and stellar objects around nearby stars is considered. Direct resolution could not be expected to reveal planetary objects, although many faint stellar objects should be detectable with a speckle camera of large dynamic range. The most promising possibilities lie with the approximately 100 nearby visual binaries with separations ?3 arcsec. Continued speckle interferometric observation of these systems could detect perturbations with amplitudes similar to those detectable by an ideal astrometric telescope. A simple scheme for measurement the fringe spacing in the composite spatial frequency power spectrum of the visual binary Eta Orionis indicates that relative separations with accuracies of 0″.002 in each coordinate are attainable. Use as reference stars of faint background stars lying within the isoplanatic patch of a nearby star is also considered. |
