Results of Iqueye, a single photon counting very high speed photometer at the ESO 3.5m NTT in 2009

Iqueye is a single photon counting very high speed photometer built for the ESO 3.5m New Technology Telescope (NTT) in La Silla (Chile) as prototype of a ‘quantum’ photometer for the 42m European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). The optics of Iqueye splits the telescope pupil into four portions, each feeding a Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD) operated in Geiger mode. A first very successful run was performed in Jan 2009; both very faint and very bright stars were observed, demonstrating the high photometric quality of the instrument over a wide dynamic range. The first run allowed also to identify some opto-mechanical improvements, which have been implemented for a second run performed in Dec 2009. The present paper will describe the first version, the improvements implemented in the second one, and some of the obtained astronomical results both on optical pulsars and digital Hanbury Brown – Twiss Intensity Interferometry.