PISCO2: the new speckle camera of the Nice 76-cm refractor

We present the new speckle camera PISCO2 made in 2010-2012, for the 76-cm refractor of C6te d'Azur Observatory. It is a focal instrument dedicated to the observation of visual binary stars using high-angular-resolution speckle-interferometry techniques to partly overcome the degradation caused by atmospheric turbulence. Fitted with an EMCCD detector, PISCOz allows the acquisition of short-exposure images that are processed in real time by our specially designed software. Two Risley prisms are used for correcting the atmospheric dispersion. All optical settingsare remotely controlled. We have already been able to observe faint, close binary stars with angular separations as small as 0"'16, and visual magnitudes of about 16.We also have measured some particularly difficult systems with a magnitude difference between the two components of about 4 magnitudes. This level of performance is very promising for the detection and study of large sets of yet unknown (or partly measured) binaries with closeseparation and/or large magnitude difference.