Proceedings Article | 8 July 2014
Proc. SPIE. 9147, Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy V
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Optical filters, Stars, Cameras, CCD cameras, Speckle interferometry, Image filtering, Computer aided design, Prototyping, Reverse engineering
Several factors make observational astronomy difficult for astronomers; one of them is the atmosphere. The light that a
star emits is refracted when it goes through the earth's atmosphere; the result of this is that the image of a punctual star is
not what the physics would lead us to expect. At the Instituto de Astronomia of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de
México (IA-UNAM) an instrument has been developed called "Berkut", which uses a high resolution technique to
improve these effects and obtain interesting and valuable scientific studies.
In this paper we present the mechanical reengineering and acceptance test of Berkut. This instrument was design for
taking images of high resolution. Essentially, it is composed by a set basic optics which is aligned and in focus with a 1-
meter class telescope. It has its own electronic components for controlling remotely a filter wheel; that allows the
exchange of the filters according to the requirements of the observer, a couple of objectives mounted in a translation
stage, and a CCD camera for acquiring several images per second that are used in the speckle interferometry technique.
A project like Berkut needs to be multidisciplinary; astronomy, engineering, optics, mechanics, electronics, and image
processing are some of the areas of knowledge used.
Berkut will be used in the telescope of the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional in Tonantzintla, located in the state of
Puebla, Mexico, but it can be used in any telescope 1 meter class. It is pretended to build another Berkuts for being used
simultaneously in different telescopes, so it is important to keep the costs as low as possible. With this instrument we
pretend to confirm the Hipparcos catalogue of binary stars besides finding exoplanets.
