Explanation
Images taken with ground based telescopes are subject to the blurring effect of atmospheric turbulence (seen to the human eye as the stars twinkling). Many astronomical imaging programs require higher resolution than is possible without some correction of the images. Lucky imaging is one of several methods used to remove atmospheric blurring. Used at a 1% selection or less, lucky imaging can reach the diffraction limit of even 2.5 m aperture telescopes, a resolution improvement factor of at least five over standard imaging systems.
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Zeta Bootis imaged with the Nordic Optical Telescope on 13 May 2000 using the lucky imaging method. (The Airy discs around the stars are diffraction from the 2.56m telescope aperture.)
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Typical short-exposure image of this binary star from the same dataset, but without using any speckle processing. The effect of the Earth's atmosphere is to break the image of each star up into speckles.
Read more about this topic: Lucky Imaging
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