The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT ) will have two 8.4 m apertures spaced 15m center-to- center. Adaptive optics will be used to recover deep long exposure diffraction limited images in the infrared. The figures show simulated images of a galaxy at 2.2 micron wavelenght (1). A single telescope gives the image in the lower left; when both apertures are combined in phase, higher resolution interference fringes are superimposed (lower right). If three similar images are obtained during the night with parallactic angles -45 degrees, 0 degrees and 45 degrees, a high resolution image can be deconvolved by the blind deconvolution method of Jefferies and Christou (2). The result (upper right) is very similar to the diffraction limited image from a 23.4 m filled circular aperture telescope (upper left.)

E.K. Hege, Steward Observatory, 1994

(1) Image Scale = 0."01/pixel. Field of view=0."64.

(2) Astrophys. J. 415, 862, 1993

Shown to the left is the calculated point spread function (PSF) for the binocular LBT displayed in a logarithmic stretch. The circles are the Airy rings

corresponding to an 8.4-meter diameter aperture. The vertical lines are fringes corresponding to two apertures with a 22.8-meter baseline.

Serge Correia, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, 1999