Present performance of the dark-speckle coronagraph

Abstract

We present the recent developments of the dark speckle coronagraph and results obtained on two close binary stars. The central star is occulted by a Lyot coronagraphic system and the residual speckle pattern is detected on a photon-counting camera. Achromaticity is achieved across a wide spectral band, using a Wynne corrector. We observed the relatively faint companions of δ Per and η Psc and give an independent estimate of their position and magnitude difference.