  Residual speckles in adaptive optics (AO) images represent a well-known
limitation on the achievement of the contrast needed for faint source
detection. Speckles in AO imagery can be the result of either residual
atmospheric aberrations, not corrected by the AO, or slowly evolving
aberrations induced by the optical system. We take advantage of the high
temporal cadence (1 ms) of the data acquired by the System for Coronagraphy
with High-order Adaptive Optics from R to K bands-VIS forerunner experiment at
the Large Binocular Telescope to characterize the AO residual speckles at
visible wavelengths. An accurate knowledge of the speckle pattern and its
dynamics is of paramount importance for the application of methods aimed at
their mitigation. By means of both an automatic identification software and
information theory, we study the main statistical properties of AO residuals
and their dynamics. We therefore provide a speckle characterization that can be
incorporated into numerical simulations to increase their realism and to
optimize the performances of both real-time and postprocessing techniques aimed
at the reduction of the speckle noise.
