DETERMINATION OF THE ATMOSPHERIC POINT-SPREAD FUNCTION BY A PARAMETERSEARCH

The result of blind deconvolution is a reconstructed image that has no n positive intensities. The number of these non positive pixels has be en used as an estimator for the departure from a perfect reconstructio n. Simulations of reconstruction of objects convolved with a kernel ha ving one or two parameters are shown to demonstrate the efficiency of the estimator. We thus present a technique of determining the unknown parameters of the point spread function by searching for the point in parameter space with the lowest number of nonpositive pixels. It is al so shown that the parameters of the convolving kernel can be obtained even in the presence of noise. This method was validated using a long exposure image of NGC 1409.