Related papers: Mauna Kea Sky Transparency from CFHT SkyProbe Data

The i-band observing conditions at Dome A on the Antarctic plateau have been investigated using data acquired during 2008 with the Chinese Small Telescope ARray. The sky brightness, variations in atmospheric transparency, cloud cover, and…

A new astronomical observatory in southeastern Indonesia is currently under construction. This Timau National Observatory will host a 3.8-metre telescope for optical and near-infrared observations. To support the operation and planning, the…

We present observations that were carried out with the Two HUndred Micron PhotometER (THUMPER) mounted on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii, at a wavelength of 200 um (frequency 1.5 THz). The observations utilise a small…

How often do bright optical transients occur on the sky but go unreported? To constrain the bright end of the astronomical transient function, a systematic search for transients that become bright enough to be noticed by the unaided eye was…

The first generation of submillimeter(submm)-wave surveys are being carried out using the 450/850-micron SCUBA camera at the JCMT on Mauna Kea. These surveys are potentially sensitive to galaxies at very high redshift, and the galaxies that…

Measuring the brightness of the night sky has become an increasingly important topic in recent years, as artificial lights and their scattering by the Earths atmosphere continue spreading around the globe. Several instruments and techniques…

Quantitative information about variations in the background at J and K' are presented and used to develop guidelines for the acquisition and reduction of ground-based images of faint extended sources in the near-infrared, especially those…

Intelligent scheduling of the sequence of scientific exposures taken at ground-based astronomical observatories is massively challenging. Observing time is over-subscribed and atmospheric conditions are constantly changing. We propose to…

We present here the characterization of the night sky-brightness at the near-infrared, the telescope seeing, and the fraction of useful time at the Calar Alto observatory. For this study we have collected a large dataset comprising 7311…

We present multi-band optical photometry of 94 spectroscopically-confirmed Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) in the redshift range 0.0055 to 0.073, obtained between 2006 and 2011. There are a total of 5522 light curve points. We show that our…

The ESA Gaia satellite scans the whole sky with a temporal sampling ranging from seconds and hours to months. Each time a source passes within the Gaia field of view, it moves over 10 CCDs in 45 s and a lightcurve with 4.5 s sampling (the…

As of 2012 Jan 21, the Pan-STARRS 1 3\pi Survey has observed the 3/4 of the sky visible from Hawaii with a minimum of 2 and mean of 7.6 observations in 5 filters, g_p1, r_p1, i_p1, z_p1, y_p1. Now at the end of the second year of the…

The fraction of available telescope time is one of the most important requirements for selecting astronomical sites affecting the performance of ground based telescopes. A quantitative survey of clouds coverage at La Palma and Mt.Graham is…

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) is a massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey facility that will replace the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope over the next two decades. This 12.5-meter telescope, with its 1.5 square degree…

A review of the MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) project is presented. MOA is a collaboration of approximately 30 astronomers from New Zealand and Japan established with the aim of finding and detecting microlensing events…

Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is a wide-field imaging camera on the prime focus of the 8.2m Subaru telescope on the summit of Maunakea in Hawaii. A team of scientists from Japan, Taiwan and Princeton University is using HSC to carry out a…

The summit of the Antarctic plateau, Dome A, is proving to be an excellent site for optical, NIR, and THz astronomical observations. GATTINI was a wide-field camera installed on the PLATO instrument module as part of the Chinese-led…

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) will obtain millions of spectra each year in the optical to near-infrared, at low (R ~ 3,000) to high (R ~ 40,000) spectral resolution by observing >4,000 spectra per pointing via a highly…

The Mauna Loa Observatory record of direct-beam solar irradiance measurements for the years 1958-2010 is analysed to investigate the variation of clear-sky terrestrial insolation with solar activity over more than four solar cycles. The raw…

Based on the observations of the Chinese Small Telescope ARray (CSTAR), the i band observing conditions at Antarctic Dome A have been investigated. The over all variations of sky brightness and transparency are calculated and subsequently…