Related papers: Planning and Executing Airborne Astronomy Missions…
The Low Frequency Instrument on board the PLANCK satellite is designed to give the most accurate map ever of the CMB anisotropy of the whole sky over a broad frequency band spanning 27 to 77 GHz. It is made of an array of 22…
Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) provides the finest angular resolution of all astronomical observation techniques. However, observations with Earth-based instruments are approaching fundamental limits on angular resolution. These…
LISA PathFinder (LPF) will be flown with the objective to test in space key technologies for LISA. However its sensitivity goals are, for good reason, one order of magnitude less than those which LISA will have to meet, both in drag-free…
The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) can perform Fizeau interferometry in the focal plane, which accesses spatial information out to the LBT's full 22.7-m edge-to-edge baseline. This mode has previously been used to obtain…
The TOLIMAN project is engaged with the construction, launch and operation of a low-cost space telescope of unorthodox optical design. Its primary science goal targets an exhaustive search for temperate-orbit rocky planets around either…
This paper describes the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager on the Solar Orbiter mission (SO/PHI), the first magnetograph and helioseismology instrument to observe the Sun from outside the Sun-Earth line. It is the key instrument meant to…
The driving objective of the Fly's Eye Project is a high resolution, high coverage time-domain survey in multiple optical passbands: our goal is to cover the entire visible sky above the 30 deg horizontal altitude with a cadence of 3 min.…
An effective method for detailed observation of the Solar System planets is the use of vehicles that can perform flight in their atmospheres, with the most promising of them being Flyers (aircraft for other planets atmospheres). Besides 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 construction of the James Webb Space Telescope has brought attention to infrared astronomy and cosmology. The potential information about our universe to be gained by this mission and future infrared telescopes is staggering, but…
The Solar Close Observations and Proximity Experiments (SCOPE) mission will send a spacecraft into the solar atmosphere at a low altitude of just 5 R_sun from the solar center. It aims to elucidate the mechanisms behind solar eruptions and…
Ultra-high angular resolution in astronomy has always been an important vehicle for making fundamental discoveries. Recent results in direct imaging of the vicinity of the supermassive black hole in the nucleus of the radio galaxy M87 by…
In this paper we describe a hexapod-based telescope mount system intended to provide sidereal tracking for the Fly's Eye Camera project -- an upcoming moderate, 21"/pixel resolution all-sky survey. By exploiting such a kind of meter-sized…
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…
Radio interferometry is the current method of choice for deep space astronomy, but in the past few decades optical techniques have become increasingly common. This research seeks to characterize the performance of aperture masking…
The Planck High Frequency Instrument (HFI) is designed to measure the temperature and polarization anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background and galactic foregrounds in six wide bands centered at 100, 143, 217, 353, 545 and 857 GHz at…
In this paper, we demonstrate the applicability of the data-driven and self-consistent solar energetic particle model, Solar-wind with FIeld-lines and Energetic-particles (SOFIE), to simulate acceleration and transport processes of solar…
Active optics techniques in astronomy provide high imaging quality. This paper is dedicated to highly deformable active optics that can generate non-axisymmetric aspheric surfaces-or freeform surfaces-by use of a minimum number of…
We tackle the problem of accurate optical tracking of distant man-made probes, on Halo orbit around the Earth-Sun libration point L2 and beyond, along interplanetary transfers. The improved performance of on-target tracking, especially when…
The sub-millimetre wavelength regime is perhaps the most poorly explored over large areas of the sky, despite the considerable effort that has been expended in making deep maps over small regions. As a consequence the properties of the…