Related papers: The StarScan plate measuring machine: overview and…
We calibrate spectrophotometric optical spectra of 32 stars commonly used as standard stars, referenced to 14 stars already on the HST-based CALSPEC flux system. Observations of CALSPEC and non-CALSPEC stars were obtained with the SuperNova…
Newly acquired data and improved data reduction algorithms mandate a fresh look at the absolute flux calibration of the CCD cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The goals are to achieve a 1\%…
We present significantly improved proper motion measurements of the Milky Way's central stellar cluster. These improvements are made possible by refining our astrometric reference frame with a new geometric optical distortion model for the…
We have developed two redundant daytime star cameras to provide the fine pointing solution for the balloon-borne submillimeter telescope, BLAST. The cameras are capable of providing a reconstructed pointing solution with an absolute…
A key science driver for the next generation of wide-field optical and radio surveys is the exploration of the time variable sky. These surveys will have unprecedented sensitivity and areal coverage, but will be limited in their ability to…
The PLATO space mission is designed to detect telluric planets in the habitable zone of solar type stars, and simultaneously characterise the host star using ultra high precision photometry. The photometry will be performed on board using…
At the Hamburger Sternwarte an effort was started in 2010 with the aim of digitizing its more than 45000 photographic plates and films stored in its plate archives. At the time of writing, more than 31000 plates have already been made…
The sensitivity and versatility of SKA will provide microarcsec astrometric precision and high quality milliarcsec-resolution images by simultaneously detecting calibrator sources near the target source. To reach these goals, we suggest…
We report redshifts, magnitudes and morphological classifications for 5369 galaxies with $m_B \leq 15.5$ and 57 galaxies fainter than this limit, in two regions covering a total of 1.70 steradians in the southern celestial hemisphere. The…
Having a need to perform differential photometry for tens of thousands stars in a several square degrees field, we developed Astrokit program. The software corrects the star brightness variations caused by variations of atmospheric…
We summarize the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data acquisition and processing steps, and describe runQA, a pipeline designed for automated data quality assessment. In particular, we show how the position of the stellar locus in color-color…
We present the stellar calibrator sample and the conversion from instrumental to physical units for the 24 micron channel of the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS). The primary calibrators are A stars, and the calibration…
We present 3.6 and 4.5 um photometry for a set of 61 standard stars observed by Spitzer's Infrared Spectrograph (IRS). The photometry was obtained with the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on Spitzer in order to help tie the calibration of IRAC…
By digitizing astronomical photographic plates one may extract full information stored on them, something that could not be practically achieved with classical analogue methods. We are developing algorithms for variable objects search using…
ASTRONIRCAM is a cryogenic-cooled slit spectrograph for the spectral range 1-2.5 mkm installed at the Nasmyth focus of the 2.5-meter telescope of the Caucasian observatory of Sternberg Astronomical Institute of Lomonosov Moscow State…
The Blanco Cosmology Survey (BCS) is a 60 night imaging survey of $\sim$80 deg$^2$ of the southern sky located in two fields: ($\alpha$,$\delta$)= (5 hr, $-55^{\circ}$) and (23 hr, $-55^{\circ}$). The survey was carried out between 2005 and…
In this paper we test the astrometric precision of VLT/FORS2 observations using a serie of CCD frames taken in Galactic bulge area. A special reduction method based on symmetrization of reference fields was used to reduce the atmospheric…
A modified version of the folded aplanatic Gregory telescope equipped with a spherical two-lens corrector is proposed for observations requiring a high signal-to-noise ratio. The basic telescope model has an aperture of 400 mm (f/3.0), its…
The Planck mission detected thousands of extragalactic radio sources at frequencies from 28 to 857 GHz. Planck's calibration is absolute (in the sense that it is based on the satellite's annual motion around the Sun and the temperature of…
We analyze stellar proper motions in the COSMOS field to assess the presence of bulk motions. At bright magnitudes (G-band 18.5--20.76 AB), we use the proper motions of 1,010 stars in the Gaia DR2 catalog. At the faint end, we computed…