Image reconstruction of extended objects: demonstration with the Starfire Optical Range 3.5m telescope

When collecting images through turbulence it is always useful to have an estimate of the turbulence strength during the time of the observations. This is particularly true when post-processing of the collected imagery is considered. For space-based objects, one usually resorts to observing a single star for this purpose. We show how this time-consuming procedure can be avoided by estimating the turbulence strength, and the corresponding transfer function, directly from the target observations. The images were collected with the 3.5 telescope at the Starfire Optical Range USAF facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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