Measurement of wave-front aberration in a small telescope remote imaging system using scene-based wave-front sensing

1. A method, comprising:

acquiring a series of target images by observing a target through time as the atmosphere changes and imaging said target onto a camera to produce said series of target images;

acquiring a series of scene based wave front sensor (SBWFS) measurements by observing said target through time as the atmosphere changes and imaging said target onto a scene based wave front sensor to produce said series of SBWFS measurements;

executing the following steps (i), (ii) and (iii) programmed on a special purpose computer:

(i) estimating the Fourier phase of said series of target images;

(ii) estimating the Fourier magnitude of said series of target images by dividing the power spectral density of said series of target images by an estimate of the power spectral density of atmospheric turbulence from said series of SBWFS measurements; and

(iii) recovering a high-resolution image of said target from said Fourier phase and said Fourier magnitude; and

displaying on a monitor said high-resolution image.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising computing, with said special purpose computer, said power spectral density of said series of target images.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising determining, with said special purpose computer, the estimate of the power spectral density of atmospheric turbulence.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the step of determining the estimate of the power spectral density of atmospheric turbulence comprises:

calculating slopes from said SMATB measurements;

estimating wavefronts from said slopes; and

estimating power spectral density of atmospheric turbulence from said wave fronts to produce to produce said estimate of the power spectral density of atmospheric turbulence.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein said slopes are calculated by a method selected from the group consisting of maximum-likelihood estimation, deconvolution and periodic correlation.

6. The method of claim 4 , wherein said slopes are calculated by periodic correlation.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising combining, with said special purpose computer, said Fourier phase and said Fourier magnitude to produce a complex signal, wherein the step of recovering a high-resolution image of said target from said Fourier phase and said Fourier magnitude includes recovering a high-resolution image of said target 1 w performing an inverse Fourier transform on said complex signal.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein said series of scene based wave front sensor (SBWFS) measurements is produced with a Shack-Hartmann sensor array.

9. A method, comprising:

acquiring a series of images of a target and a series of scene based wave front sensor (SBWFS) measurements of said target;

executing the following steps (i) through (viii) on a special purpose computer:

(i) estimating the Fourier phase of said series of images of said target;

(ii) computing a first power spectral density (first PSD) from said series of images;

(iii) calculating slopes from said SBWFS measurements;

(iv) estimating wavefronts from said slopes:,

(v) estimating atmospheric PSD from said wave fronts to produce a second PSD;

(vi) dividing said first PSD by said second PSD to produce an estimate of the Fourier magnitude of said series of images;

(vii) combining said Fourier phase and said Fourier magnitude to produce a complex signal; and

(viii) recovering a high-resolution image of said target by performing an inverse Fourier transform on said complex signal; and

displaying on a monitor said high-resolution image.

10. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising executable instructions written onto said storage medium, wherein said executable instructions cause a special purpose computer to perform the following steps (i) through (viii):

(i) estimating the Fourier phase of a series of images of a target;

(ii) computing a first power spectral density (first PSD) from said series of images;

(iii) calculating slopes from a series of scene based wave front sensor (SBWFS) measurements;

(iv) estimating wavefronts from said slopes;

(v) estimating atmospheric PSD from said wave fronts to produce a second PSD;

(vi) dividing said first PSD b said second PST) to produce an estimate of a Fourier magnitude of said series of images;

(vii) combining said Fourier phase and said Fourier magnitude to produce a complex signal; and

(viii) recovering a high-resolution image of said target by performing an inverse Fourier transform on said complex signal.

11. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 10 , wherein said executable instructions calculate said slopes by a method selected from the group consisting of maximum-likelihood estimation, deconvolution and periodic correlation.

12. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 10 , wherein said executable instructions calculate said slopes by periodic correlation.