Restoration of astronomical images using lucky imaging technique on ground-based large telescope

A lucky imaging system was developed to restore astronomical images through atmosphere turbulence on ground-based large aperture telescope. The system mainly consisted of five parts: preprocessing, frame selection, image registration, image reconstruction and image enhancement. For point objects, Strehl ratio was used instantaneous as an image quality metric, and the brightest point or centroid matching was used as the image registration method; for extended objects, a Fisher information or a Sobel operator based metric was used, and a GPU based Fourier-Mellin transform or SIFT algorithm was used to make a robust registration. To guarantee the stability of this system, it also allowed the users to select the frames manually and chose the appropriate calibration method. This lucky imaging system was successfully applied to restore the astronomical images taken by a 1.23 m telescope. The clear images of moon surface and Jupiter were got. The experimental results show that this system can be demonstrated to greatly improve the imaging resolution through atmospheric turbulence.