Sharp/Unsharp Lucky Imaging

These images of Jupiter were taken in infrared light using the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF’s NOIRLab on 8 April 2019. Because the telescope must observe through the Earth’s atmosphere, any disturbances in the air such as wind or temperature changes will distort and blur the image (left). This greatly limits the resolution the telescope can achieve on a target when only one image is taken. However, during a single night of “lucky imaging” observations, the telescope takes hundreds of exposures of the target. Some will be blurred, but many exposures will be taken when the view to space is still and clear of disturbances (right). In these “lucky” images, much smaller, more complex details on Jupiter are revealed. The research team finds the sharpest of these exposures, and compiles them into a mosaic of the whole disk.