Correction and restoration of images obtained through turbulent media

Wavefront distortion introduced as light passes through the atmosphere results in short exposure images which exhibit, amongst other effects, blurring which varies from region to region. Our aim is to remove the position dependency of the blurring and to achieve this, we need to understand the effect of atmospheric turbulence on short exposure images. The individual images are dewarped, summed and then iteratively deblurred using an estimate of the now position independent point spread function introduced by the telescope optics and the atmosphere and the resultant image approaches the theoretical resolution limit of our optical/imaging system. An important by-product of the process is a sequence of detailed shift maps which provide, in effect, a visualisation of the instantaneous turbulence field