Super Resolution for Astrophotography

What is Super Resolution?

Super Resolution is a technique to use multiple frames of the same object to achieve a higher resolution image.  It works only if the frames are shifted by fractions of a pixel from each other.  The super-resolution algorithm is able to produce a larger image that contains the information in the smaller original frames.

There are several ways to get a images slightly shifted from each other.  For astronomy, the shift in the image comes naturally from atmospheric turbulence changing the light path by small amounts.  Known as "seeing", this effect moves the image slightly and randomly, just what is required by super-resolution.  Super resolution should be used with short-exposure image since for long exposures, seeing results in a blurred image.  For this reason, super resolution is best suited for bright objects that can be imaged with short exposures, such as the Moon and planets.

For more information, you can view our paper that was published in the "Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific".

Reference: Marsh, R., Young, T.R., Johnson, T., and Smith, D., 2004, PASP, 116, 477.

How to use our Super Resolution software.

DISCLAIMER: This software is provided as is without any warranty, guarantee of usefullness, or safety! Backup all original files before use.
This software is free for non-commercial use but any published results from this program should be accompanied by either a link to this website or a reference to the above paper.

1.  Download the Linux software.  Extract the files into a new directory.

2.  Prepare five images.  These should be a series of CCD images of the same field of view.
    a. The object of interest should be near the same place in each image.  Crop the images as small as possible to decrease the run time.
    b. The images should be *.bmp

3.  Open a terminal and change to the directory where you put the files. Type "./gui" and load all five images using the buttons at the top of the screen.

4.  Click Auto Run. The software finds the displacement and calculates the superres result. The resulting image should be written as the file superres.pgm
   a. Instead of Auto Run, you can click Arrange and then Process. Arrange finds the displacement while Process finds the super resolution result. View Loc shows the relative positions of the images.
   b. Evalutate decreases the size of the images so that the super resolution result is the same size as the originals. This allows you to see how well the superres result compares to actual data.

Any questions can be directed to: superres_und@yahoo.com