Lucky imaging system on the 50 cm telescope at Xinglong observatory

The spatial resolution of ground-based telescopes was greatly limited by the effects of atmospheric turbulence. Lucky imaging can efficiently reduce the blurring effects of atmospheric turbulence with low cost, uncomplicated instrument and easy actualizing solution. Lucky imaging system is based on the 50cm telescope at Xinglong Observatory. It consists of filters, subsystem of barlow lens which increases the focal length of telescope, subsystem of data acquisition and subsystem of data reduction. The moon, globular clusters and close binary stars were observed in good seeing conditions, by using the lucky imaging system. Sharp images of the lunar surface, and FWHM of 0.6 of stars which is two times better than the diffraction of the 50cm telescope were obtained successfully. The experimental results show that this system can greatly improve the spatial resolution of ground-based telescopes, and it would play an important role in subsequent high resolution astronomical observations.