KEYWORDS: Information operations, Mercury, Image quality, Image registration, Space telescopes, Telescopes, Point spread functions, Signal to noise ratio, Atmospheric optics, Adaptive optics
This paper presents a highly automated, more accurate approach to High Definition Imaging (HDI) using low signal-to-noise digital videos recorded at ground-based telescopes. The HDI approach involves the acquisition of a video sequence (103 - 105 fields) taken through a turbulent atmosphere followed by three-step post-processing. The specific goal is to be able to reproduce expert results, while limiting human interaction, to study both surface features and the atmospheres of planets and moons. The telescopes used here are preferably small and not equipped with Adaptive Optics. The three steps include registration, selection and restoration. First, registration, based on a template, is performed to find the exact position of each object. Then only higher-quality frames are selected by a criterion based on a measure of the blur in a region of interest around that object. The best quality frames are then shifted and added together to create an effective time exposure under ideal observing conditions. The last step is to remove distortions in the image, caused by the atmosphere and the optical equipment, through a regularized deconvolution of instrument and residual atmospheric blur. This procedure is done first in the white light domain, and then the registration information obtained there is applied to spectral data.
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