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In recent years, handheld and portable terahertz instruments have been in rapid development for various applications ranging from non-destructive testing to biomedical imaging and sensing. For instance, we have deployed our Portable…
Astrocombs are ideal spectrograph calibrators whose limiting precision can be derived using a second, independent, astrocomb system. We therefore analyse data from two astrocombs (one 18 GHz and one 25 GHz) used simultaneously on the HARPS…
PLATO 2.0 has recently been selected for ESA's M3 launch opportunity (2022/24). Providing accurate key planet parameters (radius, mass, density and age) in statistical numbers, it addresses fundamental questions such as: How do planetary…
Detections of transiting planets from the upcoming PLATO mission are expected to face significant contamination from contaminating eclipsing binaries, resulting in false positives. To counter this, a ground-based programme to acquire…
Event-based sensors (EBS) are a promising new technology for star tracking due to their low latency and power efficiency, but prior work has thus far been evaluated exclusively in simulation with simplified signal models. We propose a novel…
We present the science drivers for the Far-Infrared Enhanced Survey Spectrometer (FIRESS), one of two science instrument on the PRobe Infrared Mission for Astrophysics (PRIMA). FIRESS is designed to meet science objectives in the areas of…
A next generation of space-based observatories aims to detect and characterize potentially Earth-like exoplanets around Sun-like stars using reflected light spectroscopy. However, it remains unclear how such direct imaging…
The near-star environment around young stars is very dynamic with winds, disks, and outflows. These processes are involved in star and planet formation, and influence the formation and habitability of planets around host stars. Even for the…
A mid-infrared nulling-space interferometer is a promising way to characterize thermal light from habitable planet candidates around Sun-like stars. However, one of the main challenges for achieving this ambitious goal is a high-precision…
The Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) is a massively-multiplexed fiber-fed optical and near-infrared 3-arm spectrograph (N_fiber=2400, 380<lambda<1260nm, 1.3 degree diameter FoV), offering unique opportunities in survey astronomy. Here…
Classification of stars and galaxies is a well-known astronomical problem that has been treated using different approaches, most of them relying on morphological information. In this paper, we tackle this issue using the low-resolution…
Astrometric detection and mass determination of Earth-mass exoplanets requires sub-microarcsec accuracy, which is theoretically possible with an imaging space telescope using field stars as an astrometric reference. The measurement must…
Spectropolarimetry is a powerful technique for remote sensing of the environment. It enables the retrieval of particle shape and size distributions in air and water to an extent that traditional spectroscopy cannot. SPEX is an instrument…
The visualization of pure phase objects by wavefront sensing has important applications ranging from surface profiling to biomedical microscopy, and generally requires bulky and complicated setups involving optical spatial filtering,…
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) will become one of the world-leading telescopes for pulsar timing array (PTA) research. The primary goals for PTAs are to detect (and subsequently study) ultra-low-frequency…
Direct detection, also known as direct imaging, is a method for discovering and characterizing the atmospheres of planets at intermediate and wide separations. It is the only means of obtaining spectra of non-transiting exoplanets.…
The Microlensing Planet Finder (MPF) is a proposed Discovery mission that will complete the first census of extrasolar planets with sensitivity to planets like those in our own solar system. MPF will employ a 1.1m aperture telescope, which…
Planetary nebulae are now well established as probes of galaxy dynamics and as standard candles in distance determinations. Motivated by the need to improve the efficiency of planetary nebulae searches and the speed with which their radial…
In a few years the Kepler and TESS missions will provide ultra-precise photometry for thousands of RR Lyrae and hundreds of Cepheid stars. In the extended Kepler mission all targets are proposed in the Guest Observer (GO) Program, while the…
We summarize some of the compelling new scientific opportunities for understanding stars and stellar systems that can be enabled by sub-milliarcsec (sub-mas) angular resolution, UV-Optical spectral imaging observations, which can reveal the…