Paper
8 December 1977 Enhancement Of Solar Corona And Comet Details
Walter Matuska, D. H. Janney Jr., J. A. Farrell, C. F. Keller Jr.
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Finely detailed striae in astronomical images can be important in formulation of theory. Examples are studies of streamers in the solar corona and of dust tails in comets. In both instances, conventional observations fail to reveal much of the structural detail. Digital image processing has been used at LASL for enhancing these images. The corona images have tremendous variations in film density which must be eliminated before fine striae can be seen. These variations can be removed by means of numerical modeling of their spatial relation to the sun. This model can be thought of as a surface of background film density. In the comet images the overall variation is less severe. Further, the large number of comet images makes it infeasible to model them individually. Hence, an extreme low-pass filter was used to create an image which can be used as the background surface. In both cases, the background surface is divided into the original image pixel-by-pixel. This quotient image is then frequency filtered for edge enhancement or noise control. Nonlinear density transformations are then used to enhance contrast. For both types of images, heretofore unmeasurable details become readily visible for analysis.
© (1977) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Walter Matuska, D. H. Janney Jr., J. A. Farrell, and C. F. Keller Jr. "Enhancement Of Solar Corona And Comet Details", Proc. SPIE 0119, Applications of Digital Image Processing, (8 December 1977); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.955694
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KEYWORDS
Coronagraphy

Comets

Solar processes

Image enhancement

Photography

Image processing

Digital image processing

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