Deconvolution by maximum entropy, as illustrated by application to the jet of M87

We present an improved method of deconvolving blurred and noisy data, appropriate for pictures of the sky taken with astronomical telescopes. The maximum entropy criterion gives the smoothest possible structure of the sky consistent with the observed image. Our improvement lies in the consistency test; we force the noise to have its correct statistical distribution. This provides greater resolution and more accurate fitting. The method is illustrated by deconvolving an optical photograph of the nuclear regions of M87.