Related papers: Precision Astrometry with Adaptive Optics

The release of Gaia catalog is revolutionary to the astronomy of solar system objects. After some effects such as atmospheric refraction and CCD geometric distortion have been taken into account, the astrometric precision for ground-based…

Abridged: The golden age of astrophysics is upon us with both grand discoveries (extra-solar planets, dark matter, dark energy) and precision cosmology. Fundamental understanding of the working of stars and galaxies is within reach, thanks…

MAVIS (the MCAO-Assisted Visible Imager and Spectrograph), planned for the VLT Adaptive Optics Facility, represents an innovative step in Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) systems, particularly in its operation at visible wavelengths…

We present the results of our study of astrometric stability of 200-in Hale (Mt. Palomar) and 10-m Keck II (Mauna Kea) telescopes, both with Adaptive Optics (AO) facilities. A group of nearby visual binaries and multiples was observed in…

Anisoplanatic effects can cause significant systematic photometric uncertainty in the analysis of dense stellar fields observed with adaptive optics. Program packages have been developed for a spatially variable PSF, but they require that a…

Context: Difference imaging has proven to be a powerful technique for detecting and monitoring the variability of unresolved stellar sources in M 31. Using this technique in surveys of galaxies outside the Local Group could have many…

High precision astrometry aims at source position determination to a very small fraction of the diffraction image size, in high SNR regime. One of the key limitations to such goal is the optical response variation of the telescope over a…

Adaptive optics laser guide star systems perform atmospheric correction of stellar wavefronts in two parts: stellar tip-tilt and high-spatial-order laser-correction. The requirement of a sufficiently bright guide star in the field-of-view…

Context: Occultations of stars by asteroids are an efficient method to study the properties of minor bodies, and can be exploited as tools to derive very precise asteroid astrometry relative to the target star. With the availability of…

We report on the first observation of cosmologically distant field galaxies with an high order Adaptive Optics (AO) system on an 8-10 meter class telescope. Two galaxies were observed at 1.6 microns at an angular resolution as high as 50…

Both lucky imaging techniques and adaptive optics require natural guide stars, limiting sky coverage, even when laser guide stars are used. Lucky imaging techniques become less successful on larger telescopes unless adaptive optics is used,…

Galaxy clusters have their unique advantages for cosmology. Here we collect a new sample of 10 lensing galaxy clusters with X-ray observations to constrain cosmological parameters.The redshifts of lensing clusters lie between 0.1 and 0.6,…

State-of-the-art coronagraphs employed on extreme adaptive optics enabled instruments, are constantly improving the contrast detection limit for companions at ever closer separations to the host star. In order to constrain their properties…

Geometric optical distortion is a significant contributor to the astrometric error budget in large telescopes using adaptive optics. To increase astrometric precision, optical distortion calibration is necessary. We investigate using…

Transforming the instrumental photometry of ground-based telescopes into a calibrated physical flux in a well-defined passband is a major challenge in astronomy. Along with the intrinsic instrumental difference between telescopes sharing…

Due to dramatic improvements in the precision of astrometric measurements, the observation of light centroid shifts in observed stars due to intervening massive compact objects (`astrometric microlensing') will become possible in the near…

This paper is the first of a series of papers in which we will apply the methods we have developed for high-precision astrometry (and photometry) with the Hubble Space Telescope to the case of wide-field ground-based images. In particular,…

We characterize the ability of the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) to perform relative astrometry across its 500~Mpix, 3 deg^2 science field of view, and across 4 years of operation. This is done using internal comparisons of ~4x10^7…

In recent years, gravitational lensing has been used as a means to detect substructure in galaxy-sized halos, via anomalous flux ratios in quadruply-imaged lenses. In addition to causing anomalous flux ratios, substructure may also perturb…

Adaptive optics is a technique mostly used on large telescopes. It turns out to be challenging for smaller telescopes (0.5~2m) due to the small isoplanatic angle, small subapertures and high correction speeds needed at visible wavelengths,…