Laboratory for Imaging through Turbulence

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The Laboratory for Imaging through Turbulence (LITT) is engaged world-leading research into certain new methods for restoring telescopic images obtained through atmospheric turbulence. The Laboratory currently receives funding from a three year, Large ARC Grant, and has received two previous three year, Large ARC Grants.
Personnel are Don Fraser, Andrew Lambert, and M. Reza Sayyah Jahromi, plus a number of part-time research students.
Astronomers have been particularly interested in removing or reducing the effects of atmospheric turbulence, and have been making considerable progress over the last 30 years. An area that has been largely neglected is that of wide field-of-view imaging - and it is in this area that the Laboratory has been obtaining unique results, using image registration and dewarping techniques. A bi-product of the method is a striking visualisation of the causal turbulence, useful in atmospheric research.
In addition to astronomical image restoration, the methods are being applied to the correction of telescope images obtained in the near horizontal direction, particularly relevant for surveillance and other purposes.
The work of the Laboratory has excited international interest, with invited presentations at conferences of the Optical Society of America, in Hawaii in 1998, and in California in October 2001. In addition, papers have been presented at several other international conferences. The ideas being developed are discussed in Fraser, Thorpe, and Lambert, "Visualization of turbulence and motion-blur removal in wide-area imaging through the atmosphere" J. Opt. Soc. Am., A, Vol. 16, No. 7, July 1999, pp. 1751-1758.

Please also visit Image Restoration And Atmospheric Turbulence & http://www.ee.adfa.edu.au/widearea/ for images related to the above research.

 

Research Activities of the School

 

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