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Session 11 - Instrumentation & Techniques.
Oral session, Monday, June 09
North Main Hall A,
The application of the Time Delay and Integrating (TDI) method is proposed in observations of lunar occultations. TDI allows us to track the diffraction pattern of stars during lunar occultation events by placing a CCD array in the pupil plane of a large telescope and stepping the charge packages in the CCD synchronously with the moving diffraction pattern. By tracking, we are able to use large telescope apertures; this yields long effective integration times and, conse- quently, high signal-to-noise ratio without sacrificing spatial resolution in the diffraction patterns. A 10-m class telescope could increase the number of resolv- able stars by about a factor of five. Computer simulations including the effect of scintillation noise and unknown lunar limb features are presented.
