A technique that takes many short-exposure images through atmospheric turbulence and selects only the sharpest frames when seeing conditions were momentarily excellent. By discarding blurry images and combining the best ones, astronomers can achieve near-diffraction-limited resolution from ground-based telescopes.
Named for relying on 'lucky' moments when atmospheric turbulence briefly creates excellent seeing conditions. The term emerged in the early 2000s as fast CCD cameras enabled rapid imaging, allowing astronomers to exploit the statistical nature of atmospheric turbulence to capture sharp images without expensive adaptive optics systems.
Lucky imaging is literally about being in the right place at the right time - atmospheric turbulence creates brief moments of crystal-clear seeing that last only milliseconds, and modern cameras are fast enough to catch these fleeting opportunities! This technique can make a modest ground-based telescope perform almost as well as space telescopes for small-field observations, achieving resolution limited only by the laws of physics rather than atmospheric blur.
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