Speckle interferometry with PISCO in Merate and prospects for the future.

Speckle interferometry measurements of binary stars have been regularly obtained with PISCO at the 1-meter Zeiss telescope of the I.N.A.F. - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera (Merate, Italy) since the end of 2003. We present here some recent results and some projects for extending and improving the scientific reach of our program. In particular, we plan to acquire more efficient detectors and install PISCO on a computer-controlled telescope in a better site belonging to Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (OCA, Caussols, France). In the future, we would like to be able to operate remotely PISCO, its detector and the telescope. Finally we present PISCO2, the new speckle camera of our group that has been built for the OCA 76-cm refractor.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]