Astronomy at High Angular Resolution: A Compendium of Techniques in the Visible and Near-Infrared (Astrophysics and Space Science Library (439))

This book offers an essential compendium of astronomical high-resolution techniques. Recent years have seen considerable developments in such techniques, which are critical to advances in many areas of astronomy. As reflected in the book, these techniques can be divided into direct methods, interferometry, and reconstruction methods, and can be applied to a huge variety of astrophysical systems, ranging from planets, single stars and binaries to active galactic nuclei, providing angular resolution in the micro- to tens of milliarcsecond scales. Written by experts in their fields, the chapters cover adaptive optics, aperture masking imaging, spectra disentangling, interferometry, lucky imaging, Roche tomography, imaging with interferometry, interferometry of AGN, AGN reverberation mapping, Doppler- and magnetic imaging of stellar surfaces, Doppler tomography, eclipse mapping, Stokes imaging, and stellar tomography.

 

This book is intended to enable a next generation of astronomers to apply high-resolution techniques. It informs readers on how to achieve the best angular resolution in the visible and near-infrared regimes from diffraction-limited to micro-arcsecond scales.

The editors of the book, H.M.J. Boffin, J.P. Berger, G. Hussain, and K. Schmidtobreick, all ESO staff, are experts in high-resolution astronomy. H. Boffin has extensive experience in editing books, including “Astrotomography” in the Springer Series Lecture Notes in Physics (2004) and “The Ecology of Blue Straggler Stars” published in the Springer series Astrophysics and Space Science Library (2015).