Related papers: Pushing the precision limit of ground-based eclips…
The Kepler Mission relies on precise differential photometry to detect the 80 parts per million (ppm) signal from an Earth-Sun equivalent transit. Such precision requires superb instrument stability on time scales up to ~2 days and…
Astrophysics demands higher precision in measurements across photometry, spectroscopy, and astrometry. Several science cases necessitate not only precision but also a high level of accuracy. We highlight the challenges involved,…
An important goal within the quest for detecting an Earth-like extrasolar planet, will be to identify atmospheric gaseous bio-signatures. Observations of the light transmitted through the Earth's atmosphere, as for an extrasolar planet,…
Interactions of grazing incidence, ultra high energy cosmic rays with the earth's atmosphere may provide a new method of studying energetic cosmic rays with gamma-ray satellites. It is found that these cosmic ray interactions may produce…
We explore the limits of photometric reductions of crowded stellar fields observed with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Two photometric procedures, based on the DoPHOT and DAOPHOT/ALLFRAME programs…
Photon counting is a mode of processing astronomical observations of low-signal targets that have been observed using an electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EMCCD). In photon counting, the EMCCD amplifies the signal, and a…
Small aperture telescopes provide the opportunity to conduct high frequency, targeted observations of near-Earth Asteroids that are not feasible with larger facilities due to highly competitive time allocation requirements. Observations of…
Stellar activity is a potential important limitation to the detection of low mass extrasolar planets with indirect methods (RV, photometry, astrometry). In previous papers, using the Sun as a proxy, we investigated the impact of stellar…
We present an analysis of high-resolution imaging of an exoplanet by a meter-class telescope positioned at a real image of the exoplanet created by the solar gravity lens. We assume an exoplanet viewed in full phase and a simple…
Current ground-based submillimeter instruments (e.g. SCUBA-2, SHARC-2 and LABOCA) have hundreds to thousands of detectors, sampled at tens to hundreds of hertz, generating up to hundreds of gigabytes per night. Since noise is correlated…
Astrometric monitoring of stars provides a promising method for discovery of low-mass planets around nearby Sun-like stars. The astronomical community has proposed several telescopes designed to perform high-precision astrometric…
Pixel lensing, gravitational microlensing of unresolved stars, is potentially much more sensitive and much more widely applicable than is generally recognized. I give explicit expressions for the pixel noise induced by a time-variable PSF,…
Conventional LIDAR systems require hundreds or thousands of photon detections to form accurate depth and reflectivity images. Recent photon-efficient computational imaging methods are remarkably effective with only 1.0 to 3.0 detected…
Exoplanets mass measurements will be a critical next step to assess the habitability of Earth-like planets: a key aspect of the 2020 vision in the previous decadal survey and also central to NASA's strategic priorities. Precision astrometry…
Recent Spitzer infrared measurements of hot Jupiter eclipses suggest that eclipse mapping techniques could be used to spatially resolve the day-side photospheric emission of these planets using partial occultations. As a first step in this…
(Abridged) The probability of detecting additional companions is essentially unchanged with respect to the single-planet configurations, but after fitting and subtraction of orbits with astrometric signal-to-noise ratio $\alpha/\sigma_d\to…
The most successful method used so far to search for extrasolar planets is the radial velocity technique, where periodical shifts on the measured emission from a star provide evidence for an orbiting planet. This method has been used on…
The original Kepler mission achieved high photometric precision thanks to ultra-stable pointing enabled by use of four reaction wheels. The loss of two of these reaction wheels reduced the telescope's ability to point precisely for extended…
Mega-pixel charge-integrating detectors are common in near-IR imaging applications. Optimal signal-to-noise ratio estimates of the photocurrents, which are particularly important in the low-signal regime, are produced by fitting linear…
We examine the repeatability, reliability, and accuracy of differential exoplanet eclipse depth measurements made using the InfraRed Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope during the post-cryogenic mission. We have re-analyzed…