Related papers: Dissecting Galaxies with Adaptive Optics
Adaptive optics can focus light through opaque media by compensating the random phase delay acquired while crossing a scattering curtain. The technique is commonly exploited in many fields, including astrophysics, microscopy, biomedicine…
Over the last few years, several interesting observations were obtained with the help of solar Adaptive Optics (AO). In this paper, few observations made using the solar AO are enlightened and briefly discussed. A list of disadvantages with…
One of the main goals of modern observational cosmology is to map the large scale structure of the Universe. A potentially powerful approach for doing this would be to exploit three-dimensional spectral maps, i.e. the specific intensity of…
We present the results from the first public blind PSF reconstruction challenge, the GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing 2010 (GREAT10) Star Challenge. Reconstruction of a spatially varying PSF, sparsely sampled by stars, at non-star…
The SINFONI instrument for ESO's VLT combines integral field spectroscopy and adaptive optics (AO). We discuss detailed simulations of the adaptive optics module. These simulations are aimed at assessing the AO module performance,…
State of the art methods in astronomical image reconstruction rely on the resolution of a regularized or constrained optimization problem. Solving this problem can be computationally intensive and usually leads to a quadratic or at least…
The long-awaited promise of studying high-redshift galaxies at long wavelengths has been partially eclipsed by progress at optical wavelengths, mostly because of the number of available pixels. It is nonetheless essential to study optically…
A ground-layer adaptive optics system (GLAO) uses a single adaptive mirror to partially correct the wavefront for atmospheric and telescope aberrations over a wide field of view. Instead of reaching diffraction limit on a narrow field, the…
We systematically investigate the error sources for high-precision astrometry from adaptive optics based near-infrared imaging data. We focus on the application in the crowded stellar field in the Galactic Center. We show that at the level…
The direct images of giant extrasolar planets recently obtained around several main sequence stars represent a major step in the study of planetary systems. These high-dynamic range images are among the most striking results obtained by the…
Context: Characterization of instrumental effects in astronomical imaging is important in order to extract accurate physical information from the observations. The measured image in a real optical instrument is usually represented by the…
Astrometric precision and knowledge of the point spread function are key ingredients for a wide range of astrophysical studies including time-delay cosmography in which strongly lensed quasar systems are used to determine the Hubble…
Galaxies are essential building blocks in the Universe. However they are faint and complex X-ray sources and require high performance instrumentation to be properly studied. Yet they are fundamental for our understanding of the Universe,…
Super-resolution microscopes (such as STED) illuminate samples with a tiny spot, and achieve very high resolution. But structures smaller than the spot cannot be resolved in this way. Therefore, we propose a technique to solve this problem.…
Adaptive optics can be used to mitigate the effects of atmospheric turbulence on imaging systems, but the correction is only partial, and deconvolution is often required to improve the resolution. This results in entire optical/digital…
A simple Gaussian size deconvolution method is routinely used to remove the blur of observed images caused by insufficient angular resolutions of existing telescopes, thereby to estimate the physical sizes of extracted sources and…
High resolution rest frame UV quasar absorption spectra covering low and high ionization species, as well as the Lyman series lines, provide remarkably detailed information about the gaseous phases of galaxies and their environments. For…
We investigate methods to calibrate the non-common path aberrations at an adaptive optics system having a wavefront-correcting device working at an extremely high resolution (larger than 150x150). We use focal-plane images collected…
Adaptive optical correction is an efficient technique to obtain high-resolution images of the retinal surface. A main limitation of adaptive optical correction, however, is the small size of the corrected image. For medical purposes it is…
Strong lensing is a powerful tool to address three major astrophysical issues: understanding the spatial distribution of mass at kpc and sub-kpc scale, where baryons and dark matter interact to shape galaxies as we see them; determining the…