Related papers: Pointing the SOFIA Telescope
We present the technology and control methods developed for the pointing system of the SPIDER experiment. SPIDER is a balloon-borne polarimeter designed to detect the imprint of primordial gravitational waves in the polarization of the…
The Gaia satellite will survey the entire celestial sphere down to 20th magnitude, obtaining astrometry, photometry, and low resolution spectrophotometry on one billion astronomical sources, plus radial velocities for over one hundred…
The HIgh-Resolution Mid-infrarEd Spectrometer (HIRMES) is the 3rd Generation Instrument for the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), currently in development at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), and due for…
We propose SILVIA (Space Interferometer Laboratory Voyaging towards Innovative Applications), a mission concept designed to demonstrate ultra-precision formation flying between three spacecraft separated by 100 m. SILVIA aims to achieve…
In normal observation procedures, the position of the observer is specified by GPS and celestial positions of an object will be calculated. But in some situations, like small zenith angle FOVs, GPS doesn't work. Therefore in this study, the…
Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high…
The Gaia satellite, planned for launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2013, is the next generation astrometry mission following Hipparcos. Gaia's primary science goal is to determine the kinematics, chemical structure and evolution…
Interferometry is a powerful technique for making sensitive, high-fidelity images of the sky, but is limited in its ability to measure extended or diffuse emission. Better images of extended astronomical objects can be obtained by…
We discuss a family of two-mirror correctors that can greatly extend the field accessible to a fixed telescope such as a liquid mirror telescope. The performance of the corrector is remarkable since it gives excellent images in patches…
We report on the measurements of telluric water vapor made with the instrument FIFI-LS on SOFIA. Since November 2018, FIFI-LS has measured the water vapor overburden with the same measurement setup on each science flight with about 10 data…
Equipped with a suitable optical relay system, telescopes employing low-cost fixed primary mirrors could point and track while delivering high-quality images to a fixed location. Such an optical tracking system would enable liquid-mirror…
Adaptive Optics is a prime example of how progress in observational astronomy can be driven by technological developments. At many observatories it is now considered to be part of a standard instrumentation suite, enabling ground-based…
Gaia's very accurate astrometric measurements will allow the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF) to be improved by a few orders of magnitude in the optical. Several sets of quasars are used to define a kinematically stable…
The proper motion (also known as position drift) field of extragalactic sources at cosmological distances across our sky can be used to measure the acceleration of the Solar System through the aberration effect. If measured very precisely,…
SAFIRE is a versatile imaging Fabry-Perot spectrograph covering 145 to 655 microns, with spectral resolving powers ranging over 5-10,000. Selected as a "PI" instrument for the airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy…
Light from astronomical objects must travel through the earth's turbulent atmosphere before it can be imaged by ground-based telescopes. To enable direct imaging at maximum theoretical angular resolution, advanced techniques such as those…
The Gaia mission is described, along with its scientific potential and its updated science perfomances. Although it is often described as a self-calibrated mission, Gaia still needs to tie part of its measurements to external scales (or to…
(Sub-)millimetre single-dish telescopes feature faster mapping speeds and access larger spatial scales than their interferometric counterparts. However, atmospheric fluctuations tend to dominate their signals and complicate recovery of the…
Space-based gravitational wave detectors based on the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) design operate by synthesizing one or more interferometers from fringe velocity measurements generated by changes in the light travel time…
Astrometric missions like Gaia provide exceptionally precise measurements of stellar positions and proper motions. Gravitational waves traveling between the observer and distant stars can induce small, correlated shifts in these apparent…