Related papers: Smart Focal Plane Technologies for VLT Instruments
The FORS Upgrade project (FORS-Up) aims at bringing a new life to the highly demanded workhorse instrument attached to ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). FORS2 is a multimode optical instrument, which started regular science operations in…
Multi-plane light converters (MPLCs) are an emerging class of optical device capable of converting a set of input spatial light modes to a new target set of output modes. This operation represents a linear optical transformation - a much…
Beam injection and extraction from a plasma module is still one of the crucial aspects to solve in order to produce high quality electron beams with a plasma accelerator. Proper matching conditions require to focus the incoming high…
We recently started to investigate how liquid-crystal on silicon (LCOS) spatial light modulator (SLM) would perform as programmable focal-plane phase mask (FPM) coronagraphs. Such "adaptive coronagraphs" could potentially help adapt to…
Active optics is defined as the control of the shape and the alignment of the components of an optical system at low temporal frequencies. For modern large telescopes with flexible monolithic or segmented primary mirrors and also flexible…
The prototype camera of the single-mirror Small Size Telescopes (SST-1M) proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) project has been designed to be very compact and to deliver high performance over thirty years of operation. The…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the the next generation facility of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes; two sites will cover both hemispheres. CTA will reach unprecedented sensitivity, energy and angular resolution in…
In recent years, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on achieving the diffraction limit with large aperture telescopes. For a well matched focal-plane instrument, the diffraction limit provides the highest possible angular resolution…
As telescopes get larger, the size of a seeing-limited spectrograph for a given resolving power becomes larger also, and for ELTs the size will be so great that high resolution instruments of simple design will be infeasible. Solutions…
Tunable filters are set to revolutionize many aspects of experimental astrophysics, particularly for applications in observational cosmology. After a summary of the fundamentals of classical spectroscopy, we present a review of the current…
The Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT, hereafter LAT), the primary instrument on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi) mission, is an imaging, wide field-of-view, high-energy \gamma-ray telescope, covering the energy range from 20…
A significant part of observations by Russian 6-m telescope is carried out using SCORPIO multi-mode focal reducer. A lot of scientific data have been collected using observations in direct imaging, slit spectroscopy and Fabry-Perot…
In the recent Astro2020 Decadal Report, ''Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s'' Adaptive Optics (AO) was identified as a crucial technology for a variety of reasons. These included an emphasis on high-contrast…
The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will transform our knowledge of the outer planets and their satellite systems; however the visibility of unique targets of opportunity with high scientific value will be reduced for northern objects.…
This paper describes theoretical modelling of electrostatic lenses based on 3, 4 and 5 closely spaced cylindrical electrodes, respectively. In each case, modelling is carried out numerically using commercial packages SIMION and LENSYS, and…
With the arrival of wide-field imagers on medium-size telescopes (e.g. SkyMapper, Pan-STARRS) and the future co-existence of LSST with the E-ELT, it is worthwhile to evaluate the scientific potential of a CCD camera with ~1 degree FOV for…
The proposed SuperNova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP) mission will have a two-meter class telescope delivering diffraction-limited images to an instrumented 0.7 square-degree field sensitive in the visible and near-infrared wavelength regime. We…
We proposed that the European ELT will be equipped with an ultra-high-precision polarimetric light feed as part of its high resolution optical and near-IR spectrograph HIRES. Such a feed is unique among the new ELTs and only possible in a…
Observations that require large physical instrument dimensions and/or a considerable amount of cryogens, as it is the case for high spatial resolution far infrared (FIR) astronomy, currently still face technological limits for their…
The instrumentation plan for the European-Extremely Large Telescope foresees a Multi-Object Spectrograph (E-ELT MOS). The MOSAIC project is proposed by a European-Brazilian consortium, to provide a unique MOS facility for astrophysics,…