Flash hyperspectral imaging of non-stellar astronomical objects

摘要

There are certain classes of astronomical objects that have rather involved spectra that can also be a composite of a number of different spectral signatures, as well as spatial characteristics that can be used for identification and analysis. Such objects include galaxies and quasars with active nuclei, colliding / interacting galaxies, and globular cluster systems around our own Milky Way and other galaxies. Flash hyperspectral imaging adds coherence-time limited functionality so that Earth orbiting spacecraft and solar system objects such as planets, asteroids and comets can be spectrally imaged as well, as these also have both spatial and spectral structure rotating and moving within much shorter time spans. Flash hyperspectral imaging systems are, therefore, also useful for faster simultaneous spatial and spectral feature analysis. Previous work has explored spectral unmixing and other types of feature extraction of these general types of objects, but without consideration of the hyperspectral imaging system involved, neither in how the data is collected nor in how the datacube is reconstructed. We will present a proof of concept simulation of a resolved object as it is imaged through such a physically modeled imaging system and its datacube reconstructed. Finally, we provide a demonstration of the capability with astronomical data, Venus and a binary star, when constrained by our physical model of the instrumental transfer function.