Optimization of exposure time division for wide field observations

The optical observations of wide fields of view encounter the problem of selection of best exposure time. As there are usually plenty of objects observed simultaneously, the quality of photometry of the brightest ones is always better than of the dimmer ones. Frequently all of them are equally interesting for the astronomers and thus it is desired to have all of them measured with the highest possible accuracy. In this paper we present a novel optimization algorithm dedicated for the division of exposure time into sub-exposures, which allows to perform photometry with more balanced noise budget. Thanks to the proposed technique, the photometric precision of dimmer objects is increased at the expense of the measurement fidelity of the brightest ones. We tested the method on real observations using two telescope setups demonstrating its usefulness and good agreement with the theoretical expectations. The main application of our approach is a wide range of sky surveys, including the ones performed by the space telescopes. The method can be applied for planning virtually any photometric observations, in which the objects of interest show a wide range of magnitudes.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Bad pixel modified interpolation for astronomical images

We present a new method of interpolation for the pixel brightness estimation in astronomical images. Our new method is simple and easily implementable. We show the comparison of this method with the widely used linear interpolation and other interpolation algorithms using one thousand astronomical images obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The comparison shows that our method improves bad pixels brightness estimation with four times lower mean error than the presently most popular linear interpolation and has a better performance than any other examined method. The presented idea is flexible and can be also applied to presently used and future interpolation methods. The proposed method is especially useful for large sky surveys image reduction but can be also applied to single image correction.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures. Printed in PASP, September 201

Beyond the current noise limit in imaging through turbulent medium

Shift-and-add is an approach employed to mitigate the phenomenon of resolution degradation in images acquired through a turbulent medium. Using this technique, a large number of consecutive short exposures is registered below the coherence time of the atmosphere or other blurring medium. The acquired images are shifted to the position of the brightest speckle and stacked together to obtain high-resolution and high signal-to-noise frame. In this paper we present a highly efficient method for determination of frames shifts, even if in a single frame the object cannot be distinguished from the background noise. The technique utilizes our custom genetic algorithm, which iteratively evolves a set of image shifts. We used the maximal energy of stacked images as an objective function for shifts estimation and validate the efficiency of the method on simulated and real images of simple and complex sources. Obtained results confirmed, that our proposed method allows for the recovery of spatial distribution of objects even only 2% brighter than their background. The presented approach extends significantly current limits of image reconstruction with the use of shift-and-add method. The applications of our algorithm include both the optical and the infrared imaging. Our method may be also employed as a digital image stabilizer in extremely low light level conditions in professional and consumer applications.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Quantum Telescopes: feasibility and constrains

Quantum Telescope is a recent idea aimed at beating the diffraction limit of spaceborne telescopes and possibly also other distant target imaging systems. There is no agreement yet on the best setup of such devices, but some configurations have been already proposed. In this Letter we characterize the predicted performance of Quantum Telescopes and their possible limitations. Our extensive simulations confirm that the presented model of such instruments is feasible and the device can provide considerable gains in the angular resolution of imaging in the UV, optical and infrared bands. We argue that it is generally possible to construct and manufacture such instruments using the latest or soon to be available technology. We refer to the latest literature to discuss the feasibility of the proposed QT system design.Comment: Optics Letters - published after major revisio

Integrable System Constructed out of Two Interacting Superconformal Fields

We describe how it is possible to introduce the interaction between superconformal fields of the same conformal dimensions. In the classical case such construction can be used to the construction of the Hirota - Satsuma equation. We construct supersymmetric Poisson tensor for such fields, which generates a new class of Hamiltonin systems. We found Lax representation for one of equation in this class by supersymmetrization Lax operator responsible for Hirota - Satsuma equation. Interestingly our supersymmetric equation is not reducible to classical Hirota - Satsuma equation. We show that our generalized system is reduced to the one of the supersymmetric KDV equation (a=4) but in this limit integrals of motion are not reduced to integrals of motion of the supersymmetric KdV equation.Comment: 15 pages,late

Zero Curvature Formalism for Supersymmetric Integrable Hierarchies in Superspace

We generalize the Drinfeld-Sokolov formalism of bosonic integrable hierarchies to superspace, in a way which systematically leads to the zero curvature formulation for the supersymmetric integrable systems starting from the Lax equation in superspace. We use the method of symmetric space as well as the non-Abelian gauge technique to obtain the supersymmetric integrable hierarchies of the AKNS type from the zero curvature condition in superspace with the graded algebras, sl(n+1,n), providing the Hermitian symmetric space structure.Comment: LaTeX, 9 pg

Supersymmetric Non-local Gas Equation

In this paper we study systematically the question of supersymmetrization of the non-local gas equation. We obtain both the N=1 and the N=2 supersymmetric generalizations of the system which are integrable. We show that both the systems are bi-Hamiltonian. While the N=1 supersymmetrization allows the hierarchy of equations to be extended to negative orders (local equations), we argue that this is not the case for the N=2 supersymmetrization. In the bosonic limit, however, the N=2 system of equations lead to a new coupled integrable system of equations.Comment: RevTex, 7page

Differential-Algebraic Integrability Analysis of the Generalized Riemann Type and Korteweg-de Vries Hydrodynamical Equations

A differential-algebraic approach to studying the Lax type integrability of the generalized Riemann type hydrodynamic equations at N = 3; 4 is devised. The approach is also applied to studying the Lax type integrability of the well known Korteweg-de Vries dynamical system.Comment: 11 page