USE OF THE HARTLEY BISPECTRUM FOR ANALYSIS OF ASTRONOMICAL SPECKLE INTERFEROMETRY DATA

The possibility of using the Hartley transform of a triple correlation (the Hartley bispectrum) for analysis of short exposure speckle images of astronomical objects is investigated. It is shown that the one-dimensional Hartley transform of the strip distribution of brightness can be obtained from the observed bispectrum by solving a nonlinear least squares problem. A method which enables one to take into account a priori information about the non-negative nature of the image and possesses good stability against random noise is suggested for solving this problem. The amount of working memory required can be reduced by a factor of two and the computer time shortened as compared with using the Fourier bispectrum. Results of numerical experiments on restoring the strip distribution of brightness are shown.