And why is it used in astronomy?
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In an imaging system, the image will be distorted by things such as the light [diffracting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction) and [ around in the system, resulting in the image being blurred to some degree. The point spread function describes how this diffraction will distort a point source of light for that imaging system.
When an image of an object is taken, the resultant image will be the [convolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution) of the PSF and what the image would be without any distortion. Therefore if we know the PSF we can use deconvolution to improve our image. To figure out the PSF isn’t that complicated, you essentially just look at some point light sources, which most stars are.
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