Point spread function modelling for wide-field small-aperture telescopes with a denoising autoencoder

The point spread function reflects the state of an optical telescope and it is important for the design of data post-processing methods. For wide-field small-aperture telescopes, the point spread function is hard to model because it is affected by many different effects and has strong temporal and spatial variations. In this paper, we propose the use of a denoising autoencoder, a type of deep neural network, to model the point spread function of wide-field small-aperture telescopes. The denoising autoencoder is a point spread function modelling method, based on pure data, which uses calibration data from real observations or numerical simulated results as point spread function templates. According to real observation conditions, different levels of random noise or aberrations are added to point spread function templates, making them realizations of the point spread function (i.e. simulated star images). Then we train the denoising autoencoder with realizations and templates of the point spread function. After training, the denoising autoencoder learns the manifold space of the point spread function and it can map any star images obtained by wide-field small-aperture telescopes directly to its point spread function. This could be used to design data post-processing or optical system alignment methods.