Related papers: The Sooner: a Large Robotic Telescope
Gravitational lensing, a compelling physical phenomenon, offers a unique avenue to investigate the morphology and physical properties of distant and faint celestial objects. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the…
Fast moving celestial objects are characterized by velocities across the celestial sphere that significantly differ from the motions of background stars. In observational images, these objects exhibit distinct shapes, contrasting with the…
Understanding of star formation in the Universe is advancing through submillimeter-wave observations of the Milky Way and other galaxies. Technological constraints on such observations require a mixture of telescope sizes and observational…
The Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) is under study for the proposed Black Hole Finder Probe, one of the three Einstein Probe missions in NASA's proposed Beyond Einstein Program. EXIST would have unique capabilities: it…
OGLE and other projects are likely to discover first stellar mass black holes and the first planets through gravitational lensing in the next year or two. It is important to have follow-up projects ready, using diverse observing methods.…
The weak gravitational lensing of high redshift type Ia supernovae has the potential of probing the structure of matter on galaxy halo scales. This is complementary to the weak lensing of galaxies which probes structure of larger scales.…
Small Solar system Objects (SSOs) preserve the physical, chemical, and dynamical signatures of the Sun's protoplanetary disk. Upcoming surveys will discover vast numbers of new objects, yet their scientific value will depend on follow-up…
Variability in the sky has been known for centuries, even millennia, but our knowledge of it is very incomplete even at the bright end. Current technology makes it possible to built small, robotic optical instruments, to record images and…
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will enable revolutionary studies of galaxies, dark matter, and black holes over cosmic time. The LSST Galaxies Science Collaboration has identified a host of preparatory research tasks required to…
Coalescing supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are the primary source candidates for low frequency gravitational wave (GW) detections, which could bring us deep insights into galaxy evolutions over cosmic time and violent processes of…
Neutrino astronomy offers the possibility to perform extra-galactic observations well beyond the photon absorption cutoff above 50 TeV. Based on observations of cosmic rays, we already know that astrophysical sources produce particles with…
The most promising concept for low frequency gravitational wave observatories are laser interferometric detectors in space. It is usually assumed that the noise floor for such a detector is dominated by optical shot noise in the signal…
Optical designs for astronomy involve implementation of active optics and adaptive optics from X-ray to the infrared. Developments and results of active optics methods for telescopes, spectrographs and coronagraph planet finders are…
Space telescope observations of massive black holes during their formation may be key to understanding the origin of supermassive black holes and high-redshift quasars. To create diagnostics for their detection and confirmation, we study a…
Ground-based telescopes coupled with adaptive optics (AO) have been playing a leading role in exoplanet direct imaging science and technological development for the past two decades and will continue to have an indispensable role for the…
The TBT project is being developed under ESA's General Studies and Technology Programme (GSTP), and shall implement a test-bed for the validation of an autonomous optical observing system in a realistic scenario within the Space Situational…
The Liverpool Telescope, situated at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, Canaries, is the first 2-m, fully instrumented robotic telescope. It recently began observations. Among Liverpool Telescope's primary scientific goals is to…
The new generation of ground-based, large-aperture solar telescopes promises to significantly increase our capabilities to understand the many basic phenomena taking place in the Sun at all atmospheric layers and how they relate to each…
If due attention is given in formulating the basic equations for the Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) phenomenon and in performing the corresponding quantitative analysis, GRBs open a main avenue of inquiring on totally new physical and astrophysical…
Optical telescopes are powerful eyes for terrestrial and astronomical detection. Here we propose a new detection method with high efficiency, strong robustness and super precision, as an enhanced technique for optical telescopes in angular…