Optical Bench · Blur Budget

Four blurs, one MTF — see which one is actually limiting you

Seeing, mount jitter, the aperture's own diffraction, and the pixel each impose their own MTF. The real system is their product. Read off which term dominates, get the Gaussian-equivalent FWHM, set your sampling in ″/px (the number your gear gives you; FWHM/1.6 is the target), and watch what deconvolution does to the noise on the true system curve. Diffraction fixed at λ = 550 nm.

Optical train

Detector & noise

Blur budget — Gaussian-equivalent FWHM per component

The four component MTFs and their product

Same frequency axis (cycles per arcsec) so you can read them off against each other. The bold white curve is the MTF that actually exists — everything below the seeing/mount rolloff is gone before diffraction ever matters. Fit all shows the full band out to the diffraction cutoff; zoom focuses on the combined rolloff.

seeing mount aperture (diffraction) pixel combined (real) diffraction cutoff Nyquist

Combined MTF & the inverse filter

Amber is the gain deconvolution must apply to undo the real system (1/MTF) — the noise amplification at each frequency, up to your Nyquist.

combined MTF 1/MTF (noise gain) Nyquist

Faint region, before & after deconvolution

A dim background at your target SNR, blurred by the real PSF and sampled, then inverse-filtered to Nyquist. Same demonstration as before, now on the true system.

true recorded deconvolved