Related papers: The AMiBA Hexapod Telescope Mount
Coronagraphs on future space telescopes will require precise wavefront correction to detect Earth-like exoplanets near their host stars. High-actuator count microelectromechanical system (MEMS) deformable mirrors provide wavefront control…
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope is a 6-meter telescope designed to map the Cosmic Microwave Background simultaneously at 145 GHz, 215 GHz, and 280 GHz with arcminute resolution. Each frequency will have a 32 by 32 element focal plane array…
At a fraction the total cost of an equivalent orbital mission, scientific balloon-borne platforms, operating above 99.7% of the Earth's atmosphere, offer attractive, competitive, and effective observational capabilities -- namely space-like…
One of the main design goals of the MAGIC telescopes is the very fast repositioning in case of Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) alarms, implying a low weight of the telescope dish. This is accomplished by using a space frame made of carbon fiber epoxy…
High-contrast imaging and spectroscopy provide unique constraints for exoplanet formation models as well as for planetary atmosphere models. Instrumentation techniques in this field have greatly improved over the last two decades, with the…
The Haystack Telescope is an antenna with a diameter of 37~m and an elevation-dependent surface accuracy of $\le{}100~\mu{}\rm{}m$ that is capable of millimeter-wave observations. The radome-enclosed instrument serves as a radar sensor for…
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…
The International Axion Observatory (IAXO) is a new generation axion helioscope aiming at a sensitivity to the axion-photon coupling of a few 10$^{12}$ GeV$^{-1}$, i.e. 1 - 1.5 orders of magnitude beyond the one currently achieved by CAST.…
We describe the MAXIMA experiment, a balloon-borne measurement designed to map temperature anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) over a wide range of angular scales (multipole range 80 < l < 800). The experiment consists of a…
The Australian Astronomical Observatory's 'tilting spine' fibre positioning technology has been redeveloped to provide superior performance in a smaller package. The new design offers demonstrated closed-loop positioning errors of 2.8…
Bundle adjustment (BA) is the standard way to optimise camera poses and to produce sparse representations of a scene. However, as the number of camera poses and features grows, refinement through bundle adjustment becomes inefficient.…
Small-pitch populated focal planes are essential enabling technologies for the next generation of highly multiplexed astronomical instruments. As modern astrophysics relies on massive spectroscopic surveys to study dark energy, dark matter,…
Starbugs are miniature piezoelectric walking robots that can be operated in parallel to position many payloads like optical fibers across a telescopes focal plane. They consist of two concentric piezoelectric ceramic tubes that walk with…
We present a catalog of extragalactic proper motions created using archival VLBI data and our own VLBA astrometry. The catalog contains 713 proper motions, with average uncertainties of ~ 24 muas/yr, including 40 new or improved proper…
The Yuan-Tseh Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA) is the first interferometer dedicated to studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation at 3mm wavelength. The choice of 3mm was made to minimize the…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a future ground-based observatory for gamma-ray astronomy providing unparalleled sensitivity in the energy range from 20 GeV up to 300 TeV. CTA will consist of telescopes with three different sizes.…
The AMANDA-II telescope at the South Pole is constructed of 677 optical modules at 19 strings. We describe the observation of atmospheric neutrinos with the first stage 10-string detector AMANDA-B10, which establishes AMANDA as a working…
The Micro Solar-Flare Apparatus (MiSolFA) is a compact X-ray imaging spectrometer designed for a small 6U micro-satellite. As a relatively inexpensive yet capable Earth-orbiting instrument, MiSolFA is designed to image the high-energy…
A multimode multiport antenna (M$^3$PA), constisting of a single conducting structure, is proposed for use with the airborne collision avoidance system (ACAS). Its cupola-shaped surface is selected from a set of aerodynamically suitable and…
In less than a year, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will inherit the mantle of being the world's pre-eminent infrared observatory. JWST will carry with it an Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) as one of the supported operational…