Imaging a single star through atmospheric turbulence: while the angular resolution of a long exposure image (top left) is limited by the strength of the atmospheric turbulence (commonly quantified by Fried’s parameter r_o), a short exposure image (bottom left) encapsulates information up to the diffraction-limited upper frequency bound which is proportional to the diameter D of the telescope’s primary mirror. The right panel shows the radial averaged modular transfer function (MTF) for diffraction-limited, short and long exposure imaging. While the long exposure MTF falls to nearly zero at r_o/λ, the average short exposure MTF reaches intermediate levels up to the diffraction limited upper frequency bound. The short exposure MTF was averaged over 5000 trials. The simulation was performed for D/r_o = 13.3.