Restoration and photometry of full-disk solar images

Daily, photometric, full-disk digital solar images have been taken at the San Fernando Observatory (SFO) in several wavelengths for more than 10 years. This work describes a project to evaluate and remove the effects of scattered light from the images, while preserving the photometry. We model both the solar limb and the point-spread function analytically, and the algorithm uses a least-squares fitting technique that does not require artificial extension of the data. Image restoration is carried out using standard techniques, with the exception of a method for estimating a non-white noise component. We show using artificial solar images with "sunspots" and "faculae" that the effects of blurring are greater near the solar limb, but that the restorations recover most of the actual contrast of surface features. Images taken with two different telescopes, after restoration, show surface feature contrasts that are in better agreement than before the restoration. In addition, the measured umbral contrast of approximately -90% on restored images at 6723 Angstrom is the expected contrast value for umbral temperatures near 3000 K. Modeling of the solar irradiance using restored images instead of the original images from a 3 month period in 1988 shows no advantage if we use variations in sunspot deficit and facular excess to model irradiance variations. However, a new parameter, the model total irradiance derived from restored broadband red images, can model the actual solar irradiance during this period with an R-2 value of 0.96.